S2a 


BOOK    23g.P697    c.  1 

PLATT    #    IS    RELIGION    DYING 


3  T153  OOObbb??  fl 


Date  Due 

JAN  ?     'S 

y 

Demco  293-5 

M  1^ 


Is  Religion  Dying?  ^^^^ 

■fS5 

a  Si?mpo6ium^  ^ 


AN  HOUR  WITH  THE  PHILOSOPHERS. 


W.  H.  PLATT,  D.D.,  LLD, 

AUTHOR  OF  "the  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SUPERNATURAL,"    "  AFTER  DEATH,  WHAT? 

"unity  of  law,"  etc.,  etc. 


Washington,  D.  C.  ■ 

W.  H.  MORRISON,  Publisher. 

1889. 

1  n  I  /t 


TO 

Edward  F.  Searles,  Esq., 

Great  Barrington. 
MASSACHUSETTS. 


PRINTED     BY 

WILLIAM  GREEN, 

324,  326  and  328  Pearl  Street, 

NEW    YOKK  CITY. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

r^  While    investigating    the    opinions  of  well-known 

.^^     thinkers  of  the  day  upon  the  present  religious  out- 

^      look  of  the  world,  it  occurred  to  me  to  make  them 

^       talk  to  each  other  out  of  their  books  ;    so   I  brought 

them  all  together  at  an  imaginary  breakfast    in  the 

library    of    a    literary    gentleman,  who  should  direct 

y^     their   supposed    conversation    upon    the    topics   and 

^      within    the  scope  arranged  in  the  table  of  contents. 

i      Quotations  thus  take  the  shape  of  conversations. 

W.  H.  P. 


CONTENTS 


I.  The    Religion  of    Worship,    without    Morality, 

DIED  BY  Exhaustion, 24 

^;Nrrr-C°ht'lp°'^'''--" '' 

II.  The    Religion    of    Morality,  without  Worship, 

DIED  BY  Exclusion,     .         .        .        .        .        .        .27 

1.  Atheism, 27 

{a)  Positivism, 27 

{b)  Agnosticism,    , .  27 

2.  Conflict  between  Science  and  Religion — Draper,  .  .  28 
{a)  Conflict  as  to  the  Nature  of  God,  ....  32 
{b)  Conflict  as  to  the  Nature  of  the  Soul,  .  .  .  -33 
{c)  Conflict  as  to  the  Nature  of  the  World,  ...  34 
{d)  Conflict  as  to  the  Criterion  of  Truth,     ....  36 

3.  Bible  Criticised — IngersoU,           .....  46 

4.  Sociological  Drift,  .          .         .  .         .  .  -57 

{a)  A  Morality  of  Philosophy  without  Religion,      .          .  57 

{b)  A  Morality  of  Religion  without  a  God — Compte,           .  67 

III.  The  Religion  of  both  Worship  and  Morality — 

Christ, 94 

I.  The  Survival  of  the  Fittest, 96 

{a)  The  Fittest  by  Nature,        .          .....  98 

{b)  The  Fittest  by  Adaptation, 99 

{c)  The  Fittest  by  Resistance, 106 

{d)  The  Fittest  by  the  Law  of  Evolution,        ...  122 


IS  RELIGION   DYING? 


[  The  reader  will  remember  that  the  matter  under  quo- 
tation-marks is  extracted  verbatim  et  literatim  from  the 
ivritings  of  the  speakers^  respectively?^ 

T^HERE  were  supposed  to  be  present  at  this  sym- 
-'•  posium,  besides  the  host,  the  Dean  of  the  Cathe- 
dral, representative  thinkers  of  different  lines  of 
thought — Theists,  Atheists,  Agnostics,  and  Positiv- 
ists — irrespective  of  age  or  country.  The  thinkers 
are  present  in  their  thoughts,  and  thought  keeps  no 
chronology.  The  talkers  all  talk  to  the  question,  Is 
Religion  Dying  ? 

The  host,  not  intending  to  advocate  any  doctrine 
unfriendly  to  religion,  turned  to  the  reverend  Dean 
and  remarked,  "Of  late  we  hear  it  asked,  Is  religion 
dying?" 

Some  one  inquired,  "  What  religion  ?  "  The  host 
replied,  "  The  question  of  this  day  is,  not  what  relig- 
ion, but  any." 

"All  hope  that  it  is  dying  in  its  errors,"  said  the 
Dean,  "  but  we  know  that  it  will  live  in  its  truths.  As 
that  which  is  divine  in  the  Church  cannot  die,  so  that 
which  is  human  in  it  cannot  live.  It  will  gain  in 
moral  influence  as  it  loses  in  political  power.  If  the 
priest  is  shorn  of  official  domination,  he  will  gain  in 
affection  as  pastor  and  teacher.  Truth  is  its  own  au- 
thority ;  and  the  Church  will  not  be  without  authority 

[2J 


B       ■  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

SO  long  as  it  is  the  ground  and  pillar  of  the  truth  as 
Christ  appointed.  When  it  is  other  than  that,  or  more 
or  less  than  that,  it  is  nothing." 

"  Or  worse,"  it  was  exclaimed  by  several. 

''Theologies  may  die,  but  not  religion,"  rejoined 
the  Dean.  "  The  finite  must  ever  lean  upon  the  in- 
finite, and  that  is  religion." 

"  It  may  happen  again,"  said  the  host,  "  that  the 
people,  as  once  in  Greece  and  Rome,  may  turn  for  the 
truth  from  the  Priests  and  the  Temples  to  the  Forum 
and  to  the  Philosophers." 

"  And,"  said  the  Dean,  "  when  they  turned  from  the 
temples  of  even  the  false  gods,  they  had  a  carnival  of 
wickedness  until  they  turned  in  worship  to  the  altars 
of  the  true  God." 

"  Yes,"  remarked  the  host,  "  social  chaos  reigns 
when  men  are  not  governed  either  by  the  reverence 
of  religion  or  the  wisdom  of  philosophy.  Account 
for  it  as  we  may,  all  classes  seem  to  be  more  and  more 
indifferent  to  religion.  The  uninformed  do  not  long 
believe  what  the  well-informed  doubt  ;  nor  will  the 
uninformed  long  doubt  what  the  well-informed  be- 
lieve. The  authority  of  reason  rather  than  that  of 
faith,  or  the  bare  corporate  authority  of  the  Church, 
ultimately  leads  the  world." 

"■  And  yet  faith,"  observed  the  Dean,  ''  has  ever 
governed  the  world.  It  was  Moses,  Mahomet,  Zoro- 
aster, Confucius,  Buddah,  or  Christ." 

"  What  is  faith  ?  "  asked  the  host. 

*'  Faith,"  replied  the  Dean,  "is  the  eye  of  religion,  as 
intuition  is  the  eye  of  reason.  Those  who  admit 
reason  cannot  deny  faith.  The  educated  few  may 
lose  their  faith  through  speculative  thinking,  but  the 
uneducated  many  will  retain   their  faith  through    a 


THEOLOGIES  DIE.  7 

true  worship.     The  gulf  between  these  two  conditions 
is  wide  and  deep." 

"  But  education  is  rapidly  narrowing  this  gulf." 

"  But  the  gulf  which  is  narrowed  by  education  is 
widened  by  toil.  Somebody  must  work.  Toilers 
cannot  be  thinkers.  Trained  thinking  is  the  work  of 
a  life.  He  who  toils  by  day  cannot  read  metaphysics 
at  night.  The  few  ever  have,  and  ever  will,  think  for 
the  many." 

''What,  then,  governs  the  world,  if  intellectual  im- 
provement does  not  ? " 

"  Organization  governs  the  world.  But  what  shall 
organize  organization — faith  or  force  ?  " 

"Events." 

"And  whence  come  events  but  out  of  opinions, 
credulity,  faith,  passion,  greed,  ambition,  and  the 
master  of  masters — the  inevitable." 

''What  is  the  inevitable?"  asked  the  Dean. 
"  Events  inevitable  to  the  power  of  man  do  not  prove 
themselves  inevitable  to  the  power  above  man.  The 
power  to  produce  is  the  power  to  control." 

"  I  can  better  describe  than  define  the  inevitable," 
replied  the  host.  "  Man  must  meet  his  obligations  to 
man,  irrespective  of  the  theological  dogmas  of  either. 
The  fields  must  be  planted  and  harvested;  houses  must 
be  built ;  in  a  word,  no  task  waits  upon  creed.  Duty 
to  all  dominates  opinion  in  each.  A  unit  is  next  to 
nothing  ;  but  multiplied,  it  is  next  to  everything." 

"  Human  despair  and  human  hope,"  it  was  re- 
marked, ''will  ever  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  group 
mankind  together  in  what  is  called  the  Church  that 
formulates  human  or  superhuman  answers  to  the  in- 
exorable enigma  of  eternity.  No  man  can  disbelieve 
in   everything.     No   creed  includes  all  truth,  and  no 


8  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

creed   excludes  all    error.     Error  is    the    absence   of 
truth." 

''  But  is  it  not  apparent  that  ecclesiastical  authority, 
as  authority,  is  losing  its  hold  upon  the  mind  and  con- 
duct of  the  world  ?  Neither  opinions  nor  conduct  will 
ever  be  compulsory  again,  by  Priest  or  Church.  The 
Inquisition  is  the  horror  of  the  past  and  the  im- 
possibility of  the  future.  We  care  not  what  may  be 
the  theology  of  our  neighbor  so  long  as  he  has  no 
power  to  compel  us  to  accept  it.  There  is  religious 
peace  when  there  is  no  religious  power  to  break  it.  The 
free  individual  makes  the  free  Church.  Give  the  con- 
science light,  but  not  chains.  There  is  the  most  power 
where  there  is  the  most  truth." 

''  For  all  that  the  Church  loses  in  one  direction," 
interposed  the  Dean,  "  it  gains  something  infinitely 
better  in  another.  But  has  secular  or  domestic  au- 
thority any  better  hold  ?  Will  the  evolution  of 
modern  thought  give  us  morality  without  authority  ? 
Can  we  hope  that,  in  accumulated  experience,  there 
will  be  a  minimum  of  human  weakness  and  wicked- 
ness in  a  maximumx  of  moral  knowledge  ? 

"  In  the  restlessness  of  communism,  socialism, 
agrarianism,  there  is  the  ever-recurring  antagonism 
between  class  and  class — condition  and  condition- 
status  and  status.  The  equilibrium  of  human  social  life 
is  still  unaccomplished.  Capital  and  labor  are  still 
hostile,  but  mutually  dependent.  Race  problems  are 
still  unsolved.  The  dependence  of  the  human  upon 
the  superhuman  is  still  questioned  ;  yet  nothing  is 
changed  of  the  eternal  Order.  Far  above  this  indi- 
vidual unrest  goes  on  the  ceaseless  rhythm  of  good 
and  evil — of  pleasure  and  pain — of  hope  and  despair 
— of  life  and  death." 


IS    THE    CHURCH  LOSING?  9 

''  But,  reverend  Dean,"  interposed  the  host,  "  we 
all  see  an  increasing  disregard  of  the  Sabbath,  less 
and  less  reading  of  the  Bible,  and  fewer  family 
prayers.  Public  affairs  go  on  because  they  must  ;  but 
it  is  said  that  the  Church  has  become  a  mere  name, 
and  has  ceased  to  be  a  controlling  power." 

"  Its  human  power,"  said  the  Dean,  ''  may  be  less, 
but  its  superhuman  power  is  more,  as  truth  is  seen  to 
be  more." 

''  Who  is  to  certify  what  truth  is  ?"  inquired  the  host, 

"  Truth  certifies  itself,"  it  was  replied. 

"  The  Church  is  a  witness  of  the  truth." 

''  But  who  certifies  the  Church  ?  "  inquired  the  host. 

"God,"  answered  the  Dean,  ''certifies  it  through 
the  ages.  Scientists  teach  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Parallel  all  religions,  and  which  is  fittest  ?" 

"What,  then,  is  the  cause,"  inquired  the  host,  "of 
the  present  religious  apathy  ?  " 

"The  principal  cause,"  responded  the  Dean,  "is  the 
preoccupied  mind  of  the  world,  and  an  agnosticism  as 
to  the  personality  of  the  supernatural.  Human  re- 
ligion is  the  worship  of  a  superhuman  person.  We 
cannot  worship  impersonal  power.  Science  kills  re- 
ligion only  as  it  reduces  power  to  an  impersonal  ab- 
straction." 

"  How,"  asked  the  host,  "  do  you  prove  either  the 
fact  of  the  supernatural  or  the  personality  of  the 
supernatural  ? " 

The  Dean  replied,  "  I  beg  to  refer  you  to  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer." 

Mr.  Spencer  said,  "  I  can  only  repeat  for  answer  what 
I  have  said  before — that  all  accountable  and  natural 
facts  are  proved  to  be,  in  their  ultimate  genesis,  un- 
accountable and  supernatural."  * 

*  F.  P.,  ch.  v.,  i$  30. 


10  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

The  Dean  superadded,  ''That  is  deductively  proved 
to  be  above  nature  which  nature  cannot  inductively 
prove  to  be  in  nature.  The  supernatural  is  proved  to 
be  personal  when  it  acts  like  a  person." 

It  was  asked,  ''When  does  the  supernatural  act  like 
a  person  ? " 

The  Dean  answered,  "  When  it  acts  with  intelligence, 
will,  and  consciousness." 

"  How  do  you  prove  the  intelligence  and  conscious- 
ness of  the  supernatural  ?  " 

"  By  my  own  intelligence  and  consciousness,"  re- 
plied the  Dean.  "As  the  greater  cannot  come  from 
the  less,  my  intelligence  could  have  no  unintelligent 
origin  ;  my  consciousness  no  unconscious  origin  ;  and 
all  that  constitutes  my  personality  could  have  no 
impersonal  origin." 

"  How  do  you  prove  the  natural  ?  " 

The  host  answered,  /'  By  observation  and  experi- 
ment." 

"But  how,"  again  inquired  the  Dean,  "do  you 
prove,  and  what  do  you  know  of,  that  power  mani- 
fested through  all  phenomena  that  you  observe  and 
analyze  ?  You  may  observe  and  analyze  that  which 
you  call  nature  ;  but  that  which  you  cannot  analyze 
must  be  called  supernature,  because  above  your  ob- 
servation and  analysis.  But  when  you  have  proved 
nature,  then,  all  that  you  do  not  prove  or  disprove  is 
supernature.  If  Mr.  Spencer  had  not  planted  the  word 
'  supernatural  '  firmly  in  the  terminology  of  specula- 
tive thought,  we  might  dispense  with  both  words, 
nature  and  supernature,  and  substitute  the  word  uni- 
verse, as  less  speculative  and  more  comprehensive. 
We  would,  at  least,  stop  discussion  in  that  direction^ 
The  word   universe  would   then   include  a  superior- 


WHAT  IS   NATURE?  11 

nature  in  intelligent  personality,  and  an  inferior-nature 
in  unintelligent  impersonality.  The  word  would  be 
changed,  if  the  idea  is  not.  In  asking  for  the  proof 
of  supernature,  you  assume  that  you  have  proved  nat- 
ure. The  proof  of  the  natural  is  as  difficult  as  the 
proof  of  the  supernatural." 

The  host  said,  *•  Let  me  again  ask  you  to  extend 
your  explanation  of  the  supernatural  ?" 

"As  the  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  a  stone,"  re- 
plied the  Dean,  "is  not  the  stone  itself,  so,  in  a  wider 
sense,  the  knowledge  of  nature  is  not  nature  itself. 
That  knowledge  of  nature  which  is  not  nature,  or  the 
thing  known,  is  supernature-knowledge  ;  and,  if  the 
supernature  is  personal,  it  is  God.  Thus,  by  a  knowl- 
edge of  nature  (which  knowledge  cannot  be  nature) 
there  is  a  stand-point  in  the  sphere  of  knowledge  out- 
side of  nature." 

It  was  asked,  "Where  is  the  all-knowing  mind  to 
know  all  nature  ?  " 

"  Rather,"  interposed  the  Dean,  "  where  is  the  all- 
knowing  mind  to  create  all  nature  ?  If  our  minds 
can  know  what  they  do  not  create,  certainly  the  mind 
that  creates  must  know  what  it  does  create." 

"Suppose  no  mind  creates  anything?"  it  was  asked 

"Then,"  said  the  Dean,  "an  unintelligent  universe 
is  as  glorious  as  an  intelligent  universe  ;  and  mind  is 
not  a  dignity,  if  it  is  not  a  degradation,  and  a  stone  is 
equal  to  man  ?" 

"Does  not  that  teaching,"  inquired  the  host,  "as- 
sume the  very  point  to  be  proved — that  the  knowl- 
edge of  nature  is  no  part  of  nature." 

"Which  side,"  politely  asked  the  Dean,  "does  the 
most  assuming — your  side  or  mine  ?  Is  it  for  me  to 
prove  the  negative — that   the   knowledge  of  nature  is 


12  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

no  part  of  nature — or  is  it  for  you  to  prove  affirma- 
tively, that  the  knowledge  of  nature  is  a  part  of  nature, 
as  you  claim  ?  In  other  words,  that  the  knowledge  of 
an  object  is  the  object,  or  that  the  object  is  the  knowl- 
edge of  it,  or  that  the  stone  has  knowledge  of  itself? 
You  seem  to  ignore  the  distinction  between  the  object 
and  the  subject.  But  this  you  cannot  do.  The  uni- 
verse cannot  be  an  object  without  raising  the  idea  of 
a  correlative  subject  outside  of  the  universe.  If  the 
mind  of  man  knows  a  stone,  are  both  the  mind  that 
knows  and  the  stone  that  is  known,  in  the  same  objec- 
tive plane  ?  If  it  take  subjective  mind  to  know  objec- 
tive matter,  then  there  must  be  a  difference  between 
mind  and  matter  ;  and  if  matter  be  in  the  lines  of  nat- 
ure, mind  must  be  in  the  lines  of  supernature.  Do 
you  not,  in  the  use  of  the  word  nature,  assume  that 
the  name  nature  proves  nature  to  be  all  ?  Uncon- 
sciousness does  not  include  consciousness — ignorance 
does  not  include  knowledge — impersonality  does  not 
include  personality. 

"  You  cannot  arbitrarily  make  a  word  cover  incon- 
sistent and  contradictory  ideas.  The  word  universe 
includes  the  produced  and  the  producer.  These  ideas 
cover  all  that  is — the  ro  evZ,  For  the  sake  of  conven- 
ience, you  may  call  the'objective  part  nature  and  the 
subjective  part  supernature,  but  I  protest  that  you 
shall  not,  by  the  easy  assumptions  hid  in  the  use  of  the 
word  nature,  dash  out  the  grandest  side  of  the  uni- 
verse— the  supernatural.  Any  way,  if  the  knowledge 
of  a  part  of  nature  is  itself  nature,  then  one  part  of 
nature  knows  another  part  of  nature." 

The  host  admitted  that  it  would  seem  so. 

"Moreover,"  continued  the  Dean,  ''as  conscious- 
ness is  superior  to  unconsciousness,  as  knowledge  is 


WHAT  IS  NATURE?  13 

superior  to  ignorance,  so  the  knowing  part  of  nature 
is  superior  to  the  part  known,  which  knows  nothing." 

"Yes,"  said  the  host,  "but  the  knowing  part  and 
the  part  unknown  are  one " 

The  Dean  (interrupting),  "  But  not  the  same." 

The  host  inquired  if  nature  as  a  whole  did  not  in- 
clude all  its  parts. 

"  This  book,"  said  the  Dean,  "  is  a  part  of  nature  ; 
my  knowledge  of  it,  according  to  your  argument,  is 
also  a  part  of  nature.  Then,  to  repeat  the  argument, 
as  the  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  this  book  is  not 
the  known  book  itself,  so  the  knowledge  of  a  part  of 
nature  is  itself  a  part  of  nature,  but  it  is  not  the  part 
known." 

The  host  assented,  saying,  "  Nature  is  held  to  in- 
clude both  the  part  that  knows  and  the  part  that  is 
known." 

"  Then,"  said  the  Dean,  "  the  equation  stands  thus  : 
on  one  side  is  knowledge,  consciousness,  feeling,  per- 
sonality ;  on  the  other  is  blindness,  unconsciousness, 
insensateness,  impersonality.  If  both  sides  make  one 
nature,  then  the  name  nature,  which  has  been  used 
to  express  only  material  phenomena,  is  now  used  to 
express  mental  phenomena  as  well." 

A  gentleman  on  the  right  of  the  host  remarked 
that,  "  Those  who  use  the  word  nature  to  express 
what  the  two  words,  nature  and  supernature,  former- 
ly expressed,  mean  to  deny  supernature.  They  do  not 
use  the  word  supernature,  because  they  totally  deny 
the  supernatural." 

"Those  who  deny  the  supernatural  in  one  sense," 
remarked  the  Dean,  "  yet  believe  in  it  in  another. 
Supernature  is  that  in  nature  which  we  do  not  under- 
stand in  that  which  we  think  we  do  understand.    To 


14  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

say  that  nature  is  all  does  not  destroy  the  super- 
natural in  nature.  To  refuse  to  use  a  name  does  not 
annihilate  the  object.  Supernature  is  all  that  which 
nature  is  not,  and  for  which  nature  cannot  account. 

"  But  so  far  as  there  is  no  belief  in  the  supernatural, 
the  supernatural  ceases  to  influence  the  life.  The  con- 
science stays  itself  upon  nature  and  its  hidden  ends. 
The  secular  pressure  monopolizes  the  soul,  and  man 
stands  mutely  awaiting  the  inevitable.  Man  is  preoc- 
cupied, as  we  have  said,  with  the  pressure  of  earthly 
ideas  and  motives.  We  reap  that  which  we  sow. 
Worldly  cares,  trials,  and  necessities  exclude  religion 
from  the  mind  of  the  poor  ;  and  the  pleasures  of 
riches  and  the  pride  of  ambition  monopolize  the  mind 
of  the  rich. 

''The  religion  which  is  first  out  of  the  mind,  as  with 
the  poor,  whose  only  thought  is  for  bread,  is  second 
out  of  the  life  ;  and  the  religion  which  is  first  out  of 
the  life,  as  with  the  rich,  whose  general  purpose  is  for 
self-indulgence,  is  second  out  of  the  mind. 

"Life  with  such  is  a  present  fight,  not  a  future  hope; 
and  all  thoughts  of  a  future  responsibility  go  to  sleep 
with  the  fatigues  of  a  present  toil.  The  toilers  are 
too  tired  to  fear  death.  The  non-religious  education 
which  all  now  receive  is  the  intellectual  light  that 
reveals  the  paradise  of  wealth  and  style  which  but 
few  can  hope  to  reach.  The  disappointment  at  the 
inequalities  of  life  and  of  Providence  embitters  all 
that  it  does  not  corrupt,  and  makes  a  multitude  of 
pessimists  who  suffer  to  one  optimist  who  enjoys.  The 
doctrine  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  is  terribly  ex- 
emplified in  the  increasing  combinations  of  the  many 
poor  against  the  few  rich,  accepting  the  doctrine  that 
might  makes  right.     If  there  are  no  compensations 


LIFE   A    STRUGGLE,  15 

fof  Lazarus  hereafter,  they  say,  then  every  one  is  wise 
to  be  a  Dives  here.  Man  will  attempt  to  adjust  here 
what  there  is  no  God  to  adjust  hereafter.  Com- 
munism is  the  child  of  Atheism.  Physical  force  is 
inaugurated  to  the  vacant  throne  of  the  moral. 

"Like  drowning  men,  the  struggle  is  for  life,  not  for 
immortality.  The  care  is  for  the  present,  not  the 
future.  Men  turn  from  the  ideal  to  the  real — from 
the  possible  to  the  actual.  Aspiration  is  paralyzed. 
Competition  is  inexorably  severe  and  universal.  The 
fittest  only  survive.  Civilization  has  so  multiplied 
the  artificial  wants  of  all  classes  that  the  struggle  to 
gratify  them  absorbs  all  other  aims.  The  ungratified 
poor  are  embittered,  and  the  satiated  rich  are  only 
eager  of  new  pleasures. 

"Human  life,  now  as  ever,  keeps  its  records  on  the 
sands  of  the  shores  of  Time  :  the  past  is  erased,  the 
future  is  unguessed;  the  present  is  read,  unpondered, 
and  then  obliterated  forever.  In  a  word,  skeptical 
Positivism  holds  life  to  be  a  fact  without  a  compre- 
hensible past  or  a  conceivable  future.  Past  history — 
its  literature,  its  philosophies,  its  events — are  only 
unread  epitaphs  upon  the  multitudinous  tomb  of 
humanity.  Life  has  become  exhausted — exhausted 
of  interest  to  the  rich,  except  to  be  richer,  and  of 
interest  to  the  poor,  except  the  fear  of  being  poorer. 
Hitherto,  to  the  poor,  there  has  been  an  optimism  as 
to  the  future  lighting  up  the  pessimism  of  the  pres- 
ent; but  now  an  unintermittent  and  universal  compe- 
tition for  daily  food,  raiment,  and  shelter  in  some,  and 
for  new  pleasures  in  others,  makes  all  classes  mere 
walking  encyclopedias  of  human  and  agnostic  unrest. 

'^The  presence  of  the  rich  emphasizes  the  poverty  of 
the  poor.    The  laborer  feels  no  benignant  Providence 


16  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

in  his  tasks  of  the  present,  nor  of  spiritual  compensa- 
tions in  the  uncertainties  of  the  future.  The  trial  of 
human  virtue  is  beyond  human  strength.  Hope  de- 
ferred makes  the  heart  sick.  Human  faith  dies  in 
human  disappointments.  A  dark  present  makes  a 
darker  future  ;  and  a  dark  future  makes  a  darker 
present.  Those  who  hope  nothing  from  the  future 
make  the  most  of  the  present;  and  those  who  make 
the  most  of  the  present  hope  nothing  from  the 
future. 

"For  this  apathy  there  is  no  one  cause.  The  race  is 
made  up  of  so  many  individual  units,  with  such 
various  conditions,  temperaments,  and  intellectuality, 
that  no  one  cause  can  be  assigned  for  the  character 
of  an  age.  It  is  as  natural  for  some  to  doubt  as  for 
others  to  believe.  Unrelieved  poverty  and  drudgery 
embitters  ;  unchastened  riches  indulge  and  flatter 
humanity.  The  prayer  of  Agur  was  :  '  Give  me 
neither  poverty  nor  riches;  feed  me  with  food  con- 
venient for  me;  lest  I  be  full  and  deny  thee,  and  say, 
Who  is  the  Lord  ?  or  lest  I  be  poor,  and  steal  '  (Prov. 
30:8). 

"Multitudes  of  people  no  longer  form  theories  of  life 
or  of  death.  Absorbed  in  their  pursuits,  or  riding 
their  hobbies,  they  have  ceased  to  interrogate  the 
sphinx-universe,  and  live  on  because  they  do  not  die. 
Out  of  the  momentary  engrossment,  life  is  frivolous 
and  aimless.  All  seek  to  be  amused.  Men  laugh, 
and  let  the  inevitable  come.  In  a  present  excitement 
they  think  not  of  a  future  responsibility.  There  is  no 
hope  for  any." 

"  Will  the  Church  live  and  give  hope  ?"  it  was  asked. 

It  was  answered,  "  As  said  before,  all  that  is  divine 
in  it  will  live,  and  all  that  is  human  in  it  will  die. 


MACAULATS  REMARK.  17 

"  Religion  comes  out  of  what  man  thinks  of  the 
infinite — the  eternal — the  mystery  of  the  soul  which 
makes  its  own  creed.  Religion  cannot  die ;  for 
thoughts  upon  the  infinite — the  eternal — cannot  die. 
It  is  an  age  of  inquiry,  it  is  true,  but  the  broader  faith 
of  to-morrow  takes  the  place  of  the  narrow  one  of  to- 
day. It  would  be  wiser  for  religion  to  seek  to  guide, 
than  to  repress,  this  mental  activity.  Rules  change, 
but  principles  abide.  If  the  Church  is  dead  as  an  or- 
ganic ruler,  religion  lives  as  a  diffused  power. 

''The  Church  will  live  if  it  is  worth  living,  as  a 
teacher  and  witness  of  the  truth;  and,  if  not  worth 
living  except  as  an  exponent  of  human  priestly  power, 
the  sooner  it  is  dead  the  better.  But  I  think  we  can 
trust  the  Church  of  the  Living  God  to  the  care  of  the 
Living  God.  If  it  is  His,  He  will  take  care  of  it;  and 
if  it  is  not  His,  no  one  need  take  care  of  it.  The 
Church  is  all  right.  The  travesties  and  misrepresen- 
tations of  it  only  are  wrong.  The  human  mind  was 
never  more  earnest  or  sincerely  eager  for  the  truth — 
'  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.' 

"Lord  Macaulay  remarked  that  'the  Church  had 
been  compared  to  the  Ark  of  which  we  read  in  the 
book  of  Genesis;  but  never  was  the  comparison  more 
just  than  when  she  alone  rode,  amid  darkness  and 
the  tempest,  above  the  deluge,  beneath  which  lay  en- 
tombed all  the  great  works  of  power  and  wisdom, 
bearing  within  her  the  feeble  germs  from  which  a 
second  and  more  glorious  civilization  was  to  spring.'* 
'  The  Church  saw  the  commencement  of  all  the  gov- 
ernments and  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  establishments 
that  now  exist  in  the  world;  and  we  feel  no  assurance 
that  she  is  not   destined  to  see  the  end   of  them   all. 

*  Hist.  England,  Ch.  i. 


18  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

She  was  great  and  respected  before  the  Saxon  set  foot 
in  Britain;  before  the  Frank  had  passed  the  Rhine  ; 
when  Grecian  eloquence  still  flourished  at  Antioch  ; 
when  idols  were  still  worshiped  in  the  temple  of 
Mecca.  And  she  may  still  exist  in  undiminished 
vigor  when  some  lonely  traveler  from  New  Zealand 
shall,  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  solitude,  take  his  stand 
on  a  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge  to  sketch  the 
ruins  of  St.  Paul's.'  * 

"  But  now  it  is  truth,  not  assertion,  that  is  de- 
manded. It  is  principle,  not  a  rule  ;  a  conviction,  not 
a  conceit,  that  is  sought;  a  superhuman  revelation, 
not  a  human  scheme.  Never  before  was  there  such 
an  impatience  at  everything  human  in  religion,  and 
it  is  indignantly  rejected — human  assumptions  of  oc- 
cult mysteries,  of  exoteric  powers,  and  of  esoteric 
acquaintance  with  the  invisible.  A  human  church, 
with  human  ministers  claiming  to  exercise  superhu- 
man authority  over  human  hopes  and  fears,  drives  the 
enlightened  into  a  just  hatred  of  a  human  church,  and 
into  an  unjust  hatred  of  a  true  superhuman  religion, 
with  a  divine,  superhuman  head.  The  world  will 
turn  from  these  falsities  to  Christ,  and  from  a  church 
of  this  world  to  Christ's  Church,  which  is  not  of  this 
world.  If  there  is  one  hatred  of  this  age  more  intense 
than  that  of  all  others,  it  is  of  the  human  element  yet 
obtruding  itself  in  our  superhuman  religion.  There 
is  no  power  in  the  church  like  God's  power,  and  He 
will  take  care  of  His  own." 

The  host  asked,  ''  What  is  truth  without  author- 
ity  ?  '• 

''What  is  authority  without  truth?"  was  replied. 
"  Just  as  the  church  loses  truth,  it  loses  authority." 

*'  Can  it  ever  lose  either  ?  " 

*Essay  on  Ranke's  Hist,  of  the  Popes. 


RELIGION  DICTATES  MORALITY.  19 

"According  to  Anglicanism,  Roman  errors  destroy 
Roman  authority  ;  and,  according  to  Romanism,  An- 
glican truths  want  the  saving  power  of  Roman  au- 
thority," 

"  Is  science,"  inquired  the  host,  "  to  uproot  religion, 
and  with  the  fall  of  religion,  if  it  fall,  is  morality  to 
fail  too  ?     What  is  before  us  ?  " 

"Probably,"  remarked  Dr.  Frothingham,  " we  shall 
go  on  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  gaining  purity, 
strength,  and  knowledge  as  the  future  of  the  great  or- 
ganism Humanity  perfects  itself.  Religion,  morality, 
science,  are  all  ministering  angels  on  the  rounds  of 
the  spiritual  ladder  leading  upward  out  of  sight.  It 
matters  not  whether  morality  preceded  religion,  or 
religion  morality,  so  long  as  both  abide  with  man  and 
enable  science  more  and  more  to  disclose  the  founda- 
tions upon  which  the  pillars  of  the  universe  rest. 
There  was  a  time  when  religion  had  society  all  to  it- 
self ;  because  feelings,  hopes,  fears,  anticipations 
come  first. 

"  Long  before  men  think,  study,  reason,  compare,  ad- 
just their  ideas,  understand  themselves,  they  feel  in- 
tensely. Their  dread  of  the  supernatural  power  is  fear- 
ful ;  their  hope  of  blessedness  to  come  to  them  proves  a 
source  outside  of  their  lives  and  takes  up  all  feelings 
that  their  heart  can  entertain.  Thus  religion  gets  es- 
tablished, instituted,  organized,  long  before  morals 
come  into  the  field.  Hence  we  see  how  it  is  that  relig- 
ion dictates  morality.*  What  folly  then  to  tell  us  that 
leligion  has  had  its  day,  and  a  very  long  day  ;  a  day  of 
power  amounting  to  sovereignty;  a  day  of  opulence, 
command,  honor,  tribute  to  all  mankind  ;  a  day  when 
it  has  had  human  affairs,  secular  as  well  as  spiritual, 

"  Frothingham:  Visions  of  the  Future,  p.  79. 


20  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

at  its  disposal.  It  is  said  that  it  has  lived  its  life  and 
now  must  give  place  to  other  powers — to  philosophy^ 
science,  literature,  politics,  social  reform — newly  born 
Titans  who  claim  their  opportunity  to  dictate  to  men 
the  terms  of  life.  There  is  much  reason  in  this  argu- 
ment, which  yet  as  a  teacher  of  religion  I  venture  to 
combat,  still  pressing  its  claim  to  respect,  reverence, 
and  obedience.  Religion  is  the  oldest  spirit  in  the 
world — the  most  venerable.  It  has  been,  in  its  day, 
the  teacher  of  art  and  literature — yes,  of  philosophy 
and  science.  For  philosophy  and  science  have  lain 
shivering  babes  in  its  cradle.  It  has  been  the  bene- 
factor of  mankind  when  they  had  no  other  friend.  It 
has  stood  by  the  poor  when  the  most  abandoned.  It 
has  raised  the  despised  when  they  were  tottering  and 
crushed  to  the  earth.  It  proclaimed  the  brotherhood 
of  man  in  ages  that  were  torn  with  civil  and  social 
strife.  It  has  inculcated  sentiments  of  democracy 
when  aristocracy  wore  the  crown  and  bore  the  sceptre 
and  flaunted  its  banners  in  the  air,  and  imperialism, 
held  possession  of  the  secular  world.  Hence  I  main- 
tain that  this  power  which  has  swayed  human  con- 
science for  thousands  of  years,  which  has  had  a  hold 
on  human  hopes  and  fears  such  as  no  other  power 
ever  had  or  ever  can  hope  to  have — this  power  which 
has  opened  the  gates  of  the  future  to  the  contempla- 
tion of  morality,  which  has  sheltered  mankind  beneath 
convictions  of  divine  justice,  and  has  consoled  them 
by  thoughts  of  a  heavenly  care,  has  its  right  still  to 
speak,  and  its  title  to  be  heard."* 

"  Which,"  inquired  the  host,  "  do  you  think — science, 
religion,  or  morality — can  meet  the  want  of  the  age  ?  " 

"  The  need  of  this  age,"  remarked  Dr.  Frothingham, 

*  Frothingham's  Vision  of  the  Future,  p.  148-9. 


THE   NEED   OF    THE   AGE.  21 

"is  for  sympathy,  mutual  understanding,  and  recog- 
nition between  the  high  and  the  low,  the  strong  and 
weak,  great  and  small,  rich  and  poor,  wise  and  simple, 
good  and  bad — a  practical  recognition  of  brother- 
hood, the  acknowledgment  of  fellowship,  the  obliter- 
ation of  caste,  the  diminution  of  local  and  sectarian 
prejudice,  the  free,  open-handed,  cordial  admission 
on  the  part  of  every  human  being  of  the  wants,  needs 
of  every  other  human  being.  This  want,  deeply  felt, 
passionately  uttered,  breaks  out  in  socialism,  in  com- 
munism, in  the  strikes  and  labor-unions  that  terrify 
the  community.  This  animates  the  rebellion  of  the 
poor  against  the  rich.  All  this  turmoil  of  unrest,  this 
clamor  of  want,  these  agonized  prayers  of  suffering 
men,  are  cries  for  sympathy,  recognition,  human  sup- 
port and  help.  Nothing  more  than  this  is  really 
asked.  The  immediate  claim  is  on  the  surface.  The 
real  need  is  that  heart-need  of  sympathy.  It  is  for 
religion  to  meet  that  want,  for  religion  alone  can.  It 
alone  has  the  sovereignty  over  human  nature,  the 
power  to  touch  the  depth  of  feeling,  to  stimulate  pur- 
pose, io  draw  men  away  from  their  selfish  attractions 
and  open  to  them  the  region  of  disinterested  en- 
deavor and  unconditional  love.  Its  symbols  are  the 
cross,  which  means  surrender  of  the  individual  to 
the  universal,  and  the  cup,  which  means  the  mingling 
of  the  universal  with  the  individual.  It  is,  besides, 
not  the  possession  of  the  instructed,  as  science  is,  not 
the  prerogative  of  the  disciplined,  as  philosophy  is, 
but  the  privilege  of  mankind.  It  appeals  to  the  ven- 
eration of  the  ages.  The  task  is  for  religion.  Science 
cannot  undertake  it — science  is  engrossed  by  the  pur- 
suit of  knowledge.  Philosophy  cannot  attempt  it — 
philosophy  is  engrossed  by  the  effort  to  classify  knowl- 

[3] 


22  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

edge.  Religion  must  enter  on  the  duty.  This  mighty 
spirit,  which  is  more  than  science  or  philosophy,  of 
which  they  are  the  servants,  friends,  co-workers, 
but  for  which  they  cannot  be  substitutes — this  mighty 
spirit  which  alone  now  has  the  power  to  stir  the  hu- 
man heart,  wake  up  the  human  conscience  to  heroic 
achievement,  must  break  its  bonds  and  spring  forth 
to  meet  a  desire  which  has  at  length  become  articu- 
late and  imperious."* 

Some  one  remarked  that,  ''  The  opinion  of  the  rev- 
erend Doctor  seems  to  preclude  the  questions,  "Is 
morality  prog^ressing  or  retrograding?  Are  morals 
higher  or  lower  than  they  were  ?  Are  we  gaining  or 
losing  in  ethical  principle  ?  If  religion  is  before  mor- 
ality, and  religion  is  the  great  power  now  as  in  all  the 
past,  of  course  it  will  hold  up  morality  in  the  future 
as  it  has  held  it  up  in  the  past." 

"  I  contend  with  all  my  might,"  said  Dr.  F.,  with 
distinct  emphasis,  "with  the  utmost  clearness  of  per- 
suasion, with  the  utmost  earnestness  of  conviction, 
that  the  morals  of  the  world  are  improving  year  by 
year  ;  that  we  are  getting  nearer  the  heart  of  princi- 
ples, that  we  are  understanding  the  drift  of  laws, 
that  we  are  comprehending  the  conditions  and  taking 
advantage  of  the  opportunities  that  work  together  to 
make  society  what  it  ought  to  be.  We  are  not  called 
upon  to  pronounce  an  encomium  upon  the  morals  of 
modern  society.  They  are  certainly  bad  enough.  No 
one  has  painted  worse  than  in  my  judgment  they  de- 
serve. But  this  is  not  the  question.  The  question  is 
whether  morals  are  getting  better  or  worse.  Are  they 
in  the  way  of  improvement  on  past  states,  or  are  they, 
as  many  would  have  us  believe,  declining  ?     We  shall 

*  Visions  of  the  Future,  p.  144-5- 


DR.    DRAPER'S   VIEW.  28 

never  have  perfect  morality  while  there  is  room  for 
improvement,  while  the  law  of  progress  holds.  Long 
after  we  shall  have  passed  from  the  scene  and  been 
forgotten,  nothing  like  a  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth 
will  be  seen.  Let  us  not  boast  of  the  excellence  of 
established  morals.  Our  age  has  its  peculiar  dangers, 
its  characteristic  vices,  its  special  sins.  Every  age 
has.  In  some  respects  we  are  worse  than  these  who 
have  gone  before.  We  have  left  virtues  behind  which 
they  possessed.  Still,  I  hold,  in  spite  of  all  that  can  be 
said,  in  spite  of  all  that  can  be  imagined,  that  condition 
of  things  is  vastly  and  essentially  better  than  it  has 
been.*  War  is  less  frequent  and  less  barbarous;  slavery 
is  gone  ;  humane  societies  are  rising  up  on  all  sides; 
law  is  more  defined,  and  religion  more  universal." 

"  Then,  of  course,"  interrupted  the  host,  "  religion 
cannot  be  dying.  I  think  the  remark  is  yours.  Dr. 
Draper,  that  no  spectacle  presented  to  the  thoughtful 
mind  is  more  solemn,  more  mournful,  than  the  dying 
of  an  ancient  religion,  which  in  its  day  has  given  con- 
solation to  many  generations  of  men."f 

The  Doctor  bowed  assent. 

''  If  it  be  supposed  that  the  Christian  religion  is  dy- 
ing," remarked  the  preacher,  ''the  question  is,  can 
civilization  afford  to  let  it  die  ?  And  yet  our  Saviour 
asked,  '  When  the  Son  of  Man  cometh  shall  he  find 
faith  on  the  earth  ? '  " 

"It  would  seem,"  remarked  the  host,  "that  no  one 
is  better  prepared  to  answer  Dr.  Draper's  remark 
than  yourself." 

"Then  I  should  say,"  replied  the  parish  rector, 
"  that  so  far  as  the  Christian  religion  is  concerned,  it 

*  A  Vision  of  the  Future,  p.  67. 

f  Draper:  Conflict  Between  Science  and  Religion. 


24  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

is  not  dying,  but  only  increasing  its  life.  I  know  that 
some  think  that  the  enlightened  world  is  more  and 
more  dropping  the  worship  of  the  supernatural,  and 
resting  more  and  more  upon  the  conclusions  of  mere 
science  and  experience  as  a  guide  to  conduct.  Ob- 
serve the  distinction  between  an  exhausted  religion  and 
an  excluded  religion.  It  was  exhausted  at  Caesar  and 
needed  to  be  substituted  ;  it  was  only  excluded  at 
Napoleon,  and  awaited  its  recall.  The  expectation  of 
some  now  is  to  exclude  religion  from  morality,  and 
by  exclusion  to  extinguish  it  ;  but  as  there  is  no  per- 
sistent life  of  faith  without  works,  so  there  is  none  of 
works  without  faith.  To  have  either  truly,  is  to  have 
both  really.  Together  they  live  ;  apart  they  die. 
The  worship  was  first  of  many  gods,  then  of  one  God, 
and  now  the  tendency  is  of  no  God — polytheism, 
monotheism,  atheism." 

I.  The  Religion  of  Worship,  without  Morality, 
DIED  BY  Exhaustion. 

''  Polytheism  is  the  religion  of  a  worship  without  a 
morality  ;  and  it  died  by  exhaustion.  It  had  faith 
without  works,  or  rather  superstition  without  con- 
duct. 

''  The  religion  of  Greece  and  Rome  regarded  what 
the  gods  were,  and  what  they  could  do  for  man,  not 
what  man  should  be  to  the  gods.  The  idea  was  the 
providence  of  the  gods,  not  the  morality  of  man. 
These  gods  were  either  the  spirits  of  dead  ancestors 
or  the  personified  elements  or  forces  of  Nature.  These 
religions  did  not  look  to  conduct,  and  they  became 
extinct.  They  were  false,  theistic,  and  not  truly  hu- 
manistic. Credulity  became  exhausted,  and  died  be- 
cause there  was  nothing  in  it  to  believe. 

"  These  Pagan  mythologies  may  have  had  a  mis- 


ANCIENT  religions:  25 

sion  to  the  imagination,  but  none  to  the  moral  feel- 
ings. Their  gods  were  not  worshipped  for  guidance 
in  conduct,  but  were  worshipped  only  as  fear  knelt 
before  power.  Family  morality  came  out  of  the  wor- 
ship of  family  ancestors.  These  two  contemporary 
religions  — the  worship  of  ancestors  and  the  worship 
of  the  personified  elements — both  expired  between  the 
ridicule  of  the  philosophers,  after  they  came,  and  the 
rise  of  the  Plebeian  power  in  the  State.  As  the  plebe- 
ians had  no  family  gods  to  worship,  out  of  which  came 
family  morality,  and  as  the  gods  of  Olympus  were 
powers  to  be  propitiated,  not  teachers  of  righteous- 
ness, we  can  easily  see  how,  with  the  decline  of  the- 
ology, such  as  it  was,  worship  and  morality  declined. 
When  these  ancient  beliefs  expired,  Caesar  came  to  as- 
sume that  control  over  the  conduct  of  men  which  the 
failure  of  these  beliefs  had  relinquished  ;  and  for  a 
time  there  was  what  some  Agnostics  now  hope  to 
set  up  again. 

"The  future  governs  the  present,  and  so  man  has  al- 
ways had  a  religion  of  some  sort.  In  the  earliest  ages 
of  the  world  the  Greek  and  Roman  Aryans  had  two  : 
one  for  the  family  constitution  and  morality,  called 
ancestral  worship,  and  a  mythological  one  for  the  in- 
dividual imagination  and  the  spectacular  ritual  of  the 
State.  But  while  the  philosophers  ridiculed  the  an- 
cestral superstition  out  of  the  credulity  of  men,  the 
State  offered  no  other  basis  of  morality  than  its  own 
laws,  and  all  religion  expired.  The  gods  of  Olympus 
were  the  personifications  of  the  elements,  but  no  teach- 
ers of  morality.  Indeed,  they  were  generally  horrid 
monsters  of  cruelty  and  lust." 

"  Our  gods  reflect  ourselves,"  said  Dr.  Frothing- 
ham. 


26  ■   IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

*'As  gods,  if  we  may  speak  of  them  as  more  than 
one,  were  they  not  infinitely  above  the  people  ?  Did 
the  God  of  the  Hebrews,"  asked  the  host,  ''  or  Christ 
of  the  Christians  reflect  those  who  worshipped  them  ? 
Would  it  not  be  more  strictly  according  to  the  light 
of  history  to  say  that  the  worship  of  the  true  God 
lifts  up  the  people,  and  that  of  the  false  gods  de- 
grades them  ?  The  Pagan  gods  were  either  dead 
ancestors  carrying  human  passions  up  into  the  sup- 
posed power  of  gods,  or  the  deified  elements  low- 
ering the  power  of  gods  down  to  the  standard  of  hu- 
man passions.  They  were  powers,  but  not  virtues. 
They  were  worshipped  to  propitiate  their  evil  pas- 
sions." 

"  Yes,"  said  Mr.  Ingersoll,  with  a  tone  of  sarcasm, 
"  these  gods  were  manufactured  after  numberless 
fashions.  Some  have  a  thousand  arms,  some  a  hundred 
heads  ;  some  were  adorned  with  necklaces  of  living 
snakes  ;  some  were  armed  with  clubs,  some  with 
sword  and  shield,  and  some  with  bucklers  ;  some  were 
jealous  ;  some  were  foolish  ;  some  turned  themselves 
into  men,  and  some  into  swans."  * 

"  They  were  poor  indeed,"  replie  i  the  preacher,  "  but 
they  were  the  best  the  people  knew  of.  Paul  describes 
them  in  worse  terms  than  you  do.  He  says  that  the 
people  of  those  times,  'professing  themselves  to  be 
wise,  they  became  fools  ;  and  changed  the  glory  of  the 
incorruptible  God  into  an  image  made  like  to  cor- 
ruptible man,  and  to  birds  and  four-footed  beasts, 
and  creeping  things.  Wherefore  God  also  gave  them 
up  to  uncleanness  through  the  lusts  of  their  own 
hearts,  to  dishonor  their  own  bodies  between  them- 
selves ;  who  changed  the  truth  of  God  into  a  lie,  and 

*  Ingersoll :  Gods. 


FALSE    GODS  DESCRIBED   BY  PAUL.  27 

worshipped  and  served  the  creature  more  than  the 
Creator.  As  they  did  not  like  to  retain  God  in  their 
knowledge,  God  gave  them  over  to  a  reprobate  mind, 
to  do  those  things  which  are  not  convenient,  being 
filled  with  all  unrighteousness,  fornication,  wicked- 
ness, covetousness,  maliciousness  ;  full  of  envy,  mur- 
der, deceit,  malignity  ;  whisperers,  backbiters,  haters 
of  God,  despiteful,  proud,  boasters,  inventors  of  evil 
things,  disobedient  to  parents,  without  understanding, 
covenant-breakers,  without  natural  affection,  impla- 
cable, unmerciful.  We  are  sure  that  the  judgment 
of  God  is  according  to  truth  against  them  which  com- 
mit such  things.' 

II.  The  Religion  of  Morality,  without  Worship, 
DIED  BY  Exclusion. 

I.  Atheis7n. 

(a)  Positivism. 

"Yet,"  says  M.  Comte  (the  teacher  of  Positivism, 
or  the  philosophy  of  ignorance  towards  God,  and 
faith  in  man — Comte  and  his  followers  teach  that  no 
religious  faith  is  a  delusion),  ''  from  a  religious  point 
of  view,  it  is  evident  that  no  belief,  especially  no  sys- 
tem of  worship,  could  ever  have  grown  up  which  did 
not  at  the  sam.e  time  serve  some  useful  purpose  in  the 
intellectual  and  moral  development  of  humanity. 
Hence,  every  religious  faith  is  treated  by  Positivism 
with  reverence  within  the  sphere  of  its  own  social  mis- 
sion. Every  one  has  such  a  mission,  and  remains  pro- 
gressive until  it  is  accomplished."* 

{h)  Agnosticism^  or  a  morality  without  a  worship. 

In  this,  religion  is  excluded,  but  neither  exhausted 
nor  extinguished.     It  is   works  without   faith.     It  is 

*  Edger:  Positivism,  p.  20. 


28  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

first,  a  morality  without  religion,  and  second,  it  is  a  re- 
ligion without  a  God.  But  the  full  discussion  of  Ag- 
nosticism must  be  deferred  until  we  come  to  it  as  a 
form  of  Positivism. 

In  seeking  to  establish  the  independent  dominion 
of  morality  without  worship — ethics  without  rites — 
conduct  without  faith — faith,  rites,  and  worship  must 
be  displaced.  To  do  this  there  must  be  considered 
the  alleged  conflict  between  science  and  dogma,  the 
renewed  criticisms  upon  Bible  statements,  and  socio- 
logical phenomena.  It  is  here  necessary  to  show,  not 
only  that  morality  can  stand  alone,  but  that  it  must  so 
stand,  in  consequence  of  the  decay  of  religion  brought 
about  by 

2.    The  conflict  between  Religioii  and  Sciejice. 

''  No  religion  will  die,"  said  the  host,  ''which  is  fit 
to  live." 

''Judging  the  future  by  the  past,"  remarked  some 
one,  "can  we  resist  the  conclusion  that  a  general  and 
sure  decay  is  going  on  both  in  Judaism  and  Christian- 
ity ?  In  their  conflicts  with  science,  they  must  perish, 
or  at  least  be  so  greatly  weakened  as  to  cease  to  be 
factors  in  civilization." 

Dr.  Draper  here  remarked  that,  "  There  is  an  in- 
fancy, youth,  manhood,  old  age,  and  death  to  religion 
as  well  as  to  philosophy.  The  latter  was  born  under 
the  shadow  of  the  Pyramids  ;  after  many  wanderings 
for  a  thousand  years  around  the  shores  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, it  came  back  to  its  native  place,  and  under 
the  shadow  of  the  Pyramids  it  died. 

"I  am  relieved  to  hear  you  say,"  interrupted  the 
Dean,  "that  philosophy  was  not  killed  by  religion, 
but  died  a  natural  death." 

"Religion,"  continued  Dr.  Draper,  not  noticing  the 


THE  OL  YMPIAN  GODS.  29 

interruption,  ''seems  to  be  nearing  the  end  of  its 
ancient  circuits,  to  enter  its  crypt  of  universal  death. 
For  centuries  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  Greece  was 
fast  outgrowing  her  ancient  faith.  Her  philosophers, 
in  their  studies  of  the  world,  had  been  profoundly  im- 
pressed with  the  contrast  between  the  majesty  of  the 
operations  of  Nature  and  the  worthlessness  of  the  di- 
vinities of  Olympus."* 

"And  yet,"  said  the  Dean,  "the  Olympian  Gods 
known  to  the  philosophers  were  the  elements  of  nat- 
ure personified  and  deified  by  the  fathers  of  the  phi- 
losophers. The  7'eligion-  of  the  ancients  came  from 
ancestral  worship  of  the  Penates  and  Lares,  and  not 
from  the  mythological  gods  of  the  elements.  It  was 
the  nature-worshippers  of  a  later  age  reforming  the 
ancestral  and  nature-worship  of  a  former  age." 

"The  philosophers,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "took 
the  place  of  the  priests.  But  this  did  not  happen 
without  resistance.  At  first  the  public,  and  particu- 
larly its  religious  portion,  denounced  the  rising 
doubts  as  atheism.  They  despoiled  some  of  their 
^oods  and  exiled  others  ;  some  they  put  to  death. 
They  asserted  that  what  had  been  believed  by  pious 
men  in  old  times,  and  had  stood  the  test  of  ages, 
must  necessarily  be  true." 

"Is  it  not  wise,"  asked  the  Dean,  "to  adhere  to 
that  which  has  stood  the  test  of  ages  ?  New  things  are 
not  always  better  than  the  old.  The  ancients,  as  all 
must  do,  for  ages,  stood  by  the  tried  rather  than  ex- 
periment with  the  untried." 

"  But  their  efforts,"  continued  the  Doctor,  "  were  in 
vain,  for  there  are  predestined  phases  through  which 

*  Draper  :  Intellectual  Development,  and  Con.  Sci.  and  Re., 
p.  T. 


30  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

on  such  occasions  public  opinion  must  pass.  What  it 
has  received  with  veneration  it  begins  to  doubt,  then 
it  offers  new  interpretations,  then  subsides  into  dis- 
sent, and  ends  with  the  rejection  of  the  whole  as  a 
fable.*  In  their  secession,  the  philosophers  and  histo- 
rians were  followed  by  poets,  and  finally  by  the  com- 
mon people." 

''What  then?"  ejaculated  the  Dean.  "Are  we  too 
to  witness  a  religious  decay,  and  all  the  social  chaos 
that  have  hitherto  followed  such  moral  conversions  ? 
I  think  you  yourself  said  in  your  '  Intellectual  Devel- 
opment of  Europe,'  '  Nations  plunged  in  the  abyss  of 
irreligion  must  necessarily  be  nations  in  anarchy.'" 

"  Whatever  was  the  result,"  answered  the  Doctor, 
"  the  modern  Jew  already  repudiates  the  supernatural 
element  of  Judaism,  and  the  Christian  pulpit  has 
changed  its  themes  and  tone." 

"  To  what  do  you  attribute  this  change  ?"  asked  the 
host. 

''  To  the  long  and  irrepressible  conflict,"  replied  the 
Doctor,  "between  science  and  religion." 

"  I  am  surprised  to  learn,"  remarked  the  Dean^ 
"  that  there  has  been  or  is  such  a  conflict.  All  truths 
are  consistent.  Religion  has  had  its  great  universal 
contest  with  the  evil  passions  of  men,  but  not  with 
learning." 

"  There  have  been  four  of  these  conflicts,"  remarked 
the  Doctor.f  "  The  first  was  the  conflict  respecting 
the  unity  of  God  ;  the  second  respected  the  nature  of 
the  soul  ;  the  third  the  nature  of  the  world  ;  and  the 
fourth  the  criterion  of  truth." 

"  To  be   certain,"  was  the   reply,  "  to   escape  what 

*  Draper,  Id. 

f  Draper:  Conflict  between  Science  and  Religion. 


RELIGION  DEFINED.  31 

Herbert  Spencer  calls  being  unscientific  as  science 
and  unreligious  as  religion  in  considering  these 
alleged  conflicts,  I  beg  you  will  say  what  you  mean 
by  science  and  what  you  mean  by  religion." 

"  Science,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  is  a  knowledge  of 
material  nature,  attained  and  verified  by  observation 
and  experiment.  By  religion,  as  engaged  in  this  con- 
flict, I  do  not  mean  Judaism,  for  the  Jews  founded 
many  schools  and  colleges.  They  particularly  studied 
the  science  of  medicine.  Of  all  men,  they  saw  the 
course  of  human  affairs  from  the  most  exalted  point 
of  view.  Among  the  special  sciences  they  became 
proficient  in  mathematics  and  astronomy.*  I  do  not 
mean  Mohammedanism,  for  the  Mohammedan  culti- 
vation of  science  dates  from  their  capture  of  Alexan- 
dria, f  I  do  not  refer  to  the  Oriental  religions,  nor  to 
the  Greek  Church.  This  church  has  never  since  the 
restoration  of  science  arrayed  itself  in  opposition  to 
the  advancement  of  knowledge.  On  the  contrary,  it 
has  always  met  it  with  welcome.  It  has  observed  a 
reverential  attitude  to  truth,  from  whatever  quarter  it 
may  come.  Recognizing  the  apparent  discrepancies 
between  its  interpretations  of  revealed  truth  and  the 
discoveries  of  science,  it  has  always  expected  that 
satisfactory  explanations  and  reconciliations  would 
ensue,  and  in  this  it  has  not  been  disappointed.  I 
refer  generally  in  the  remark  made  to  the  Roman 
Church,  partly  because  its  adherents  compose  the 
majority  of  Christendom,  partly  because  its  demands 
are  the  most  pretentious,  and  partly  because  it  has 
commonly  sought  to  enforce  those  demands  by  the 
civil  power.     None  of  the  Protestant  churches  have 

*  Draper's  Con.  Sci.  and  Re.,  p.  145. 
fA.  D.  638. 


S2  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

accepted  a  position  so  imperious — none  have  ever  had 
such  wide-spread  political  influence.  In  the  most 
part  they  have  been  averse  to  constraint,  and,  except 
in  a  very  few  instances,  their  opposition  has  not  passed 
beyond  the  exciting  of  theological  odium.*  It  is  also 
to  be  said  that  the  Roman  Church  is  far  more  a  political 
than  a  religious  combination. "f 

{a)   Conflict  as  to  the  Nature  of  God. 

"  The  conflicts  of  science,  then,  it  seems,"  remarked 
the  Dean,  *'  have  not  been  with  religion  at  all,  but  only 
with  a  political  institution  known  as  the  Roman 
Church.  For  the  sake  of  the  young,  who  may  be 
seriously  miseducated  in  this  matter,  would  it  not  be 
better  to  adhere  to  historical  accuracy,  and  not  speak 
of  a  conflict  between  science  and  religion,  when  con- 
fessedly there  is  none,  but  call  these  conflicts,  conflicts 
between  Science  and  Political  Power — the  Roman 
Church.  That  would  be,  at  least,  according  to  your 
own  enlightened  admission." 

''We  shall  see  how  best  to  describe  them,"  replied 
he  Doctor,  "  when  we  have  stated  them  more  fully." 

"  The  first  conflict,  you  say,"  remarked  the  Dean, 
encouraging  the  Doctor  to  go  on,  "  was  as  to  the 
nature  of  God." 

"Yes,"  answered  the  Doctor,  "and  it  involved  the 
rise  of  Mohammedanism.  Its  result  was,  that  much 
of  Asia  and  Africa,  with  the  historic  cities  of 
Jerusalem,  Alexandria,  and  Carthage,  were  wrenched 
from  Christendom,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Unity  of 
God  established  in  the  larger  part  of  what  had  been 
the  Roman  Empire.  This  political  event  was  followed 
by  the  restoration  of  science,  the    establishment   of 

*  Draper's  Con.  Sci.  and  Re. ..Preface, 
f  Draper:  Conflict  Sci.  and  Re.,  p.  329. 


RELIGIOUS  CONFLICTS.  3S 

colleges,  schools,  libraries  throughout  the  dominions 
of  the  Arabians.  Those  conquerors,  pressing  forward 
rapidly  in  their  intellectual  development,  rejected  the 
anthropomorphic  ideas  of  the  nature  of  God  remain- 
ing in  their  popular  beliefs  and  accepted  other  more 
philosophical  ones,  akin  to  those  that  had  long  pre- 
viously been  attained  to  in  India."* 

"But,"  interrupted  the  Dean,  "this  was  a  conflict 
between  religion  and  religion,  not  between  science  and 
religion.  The  nature  of  God  is  a  question  of  theology 
and  not  one  of  science.  The  word  science,  in  its  true 
sense,  comprehends  all  positive  and  definite  knowl- 
edge of  the  order  existing  among  surrounding  phenom- 
ena.f  If  questions  as  to  the  nature  of  God  be 
embraced  in  all  positive  knowledge,  then  all  theo- 
logical questions  become  scientific  questions,  and  the 
conflict  is  not  between  science  and  religion,  but  be- 
tween science  of  people  in  the  Church  and  science  of 
people  not  in  the  Church;  and  I  think,  as  I  understood 
from  statement  of  your  second  conflict,  that  it  is  of 
the  same  kind.     Will  you  please  state  it  again  ?  " 

{b)    Conflict  respecting  the  Nature  of  the  Soul. 

"  Ideas  respecting  the  nature  of  God,"  replied  the 
Doctor,  "  necessarily  influence  ideas  respecting  the 
nature  of  the  soul.  The  Eastern  Asiatics  had  adopted 
the  conception  of  an  impersonal  God,  and,  as  regards 
the  soul,  its  necessary  consequence,  the  doctrine  of  the 
emanation  and  absorption  of  the  soul.  The  Vedic 
theology  developed  itself  into  Buddhism,  which  has 
become  the  faith  of  a  majority  of  the  human  race. 
This  system  acknowledges  that  there  is  a  Supreme 
Power,  but  denies  that  there  is  a  Supreme  Being."J 

*  Draper:  Science  and  Religion, 
f  Herbert  Spencer:  First  Principles. 
:}:  Draper:  Con.  Sci.  and  Rel.,  122. 


34  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

"  Is  this  Supreme  Power  blind  ?  If  there  can  be  a 
Supreme  Power,"  interposed  the  Dean,  "  why  not  a 
Supreme  Person  ? " 

"It  contemplates,"  continued  the  Doctor,  "the  ex- 
istence of  Force,  giving  rise  in  its  manifestations  to 
matter.  It  adopts  the  theory  of  emanation  and  ab- 
sorption. In  a  burning  taper  it  sees  an  effigy  of  man — 
an  embodiment  of  matter  and  an  evolution  of  force.  If 
we  interrogate  it  respecting  the  destiny  of  the  soul,  it 
demands  of  us  what  has  become- of  the  flame  when  it 
is  blown  out  ;  and  in  what  condition  it  was  before  the 
taper  was  lighted.  Was  it  a  nonentity  ?  Has  it  been 
annihilated  ?  It  admits  that  the  idea  of  personality 
which  has  deluded  us  through  life  may  not  be  instan- 
taneously extinguished  at  death,  but  may  be  lost  by 
slow  degrees.  On  this  is  founded  the  doctrine  of 
transmigration.  But  at  length  reunion  with  the  uni- 
versal intellect  takes  place  ;  Nirvana  is  reached; 
oblivion  is  attained,  a  state  that  has  no  relation  to 
matter,  space,  or  time;  the  state  in  which  the  deportep 
flame  of  the  taper  has  gone;  the  state  in  which  we  were 
before  we  were  born.  This  was  the  doctrine  of  Aris- 
totle first,  and  afterwards  of  Averroes." 

"■  But,"  said  the  Rector,  "  how  is  all  this  a  matter  of 
science  ?  The  nature  of  the  soul,  like  the  nature  of 
God,  is  not  material,  and  therefore  not  the  subject  of 
scientific  investigation.  We  know  them  by  reason 
and  consciousness  and  not  by  experiment.  Two  out 
of  the  four  conflicts  you  have  mentioned,  therefore,  are 
not  between  science  and  religion." 

(c)   Conflict  as  to  the  Nature  of  the  World. 

"  However  that  may  be,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "  as 
to  the  first  and  second  conflicts,  there  can  be  none  as 
to  the  third,  respecting  the  nature  of  the  world.  The 
Scriptural  view  was  that  the   earth   is  a   flat  surface. 


THE   BIBLE   AND   NA  TURE.  35 

whereas  the  scientific  and  true  view  is  that  the  earth 
is  a  globe."* 

"  Are  you  not  mistaken  in    the  view  you   ascribe  to 

Scripture  ?  "  inquired  the  Dean.     "  The  seventh  verse 

of  the  ninety-eighth   Psalm,  as    found  in   the  Evening 

Service  of  the  Prayer  Book,   speaks  of  the  earth  as 

the  round  world.'  '' 

"How  long,"  inquired  the  host,  '' was  that  trans- 
lation after  Copernicus  had  proved  the  centrality  of 
the  sun  and  the  rotundity  of  the  earth  ?  " 

"  It  was  not  after  it  at  all,"  replied  the  Rector. 
"  The  translation  of  the  Psalms  in  the  Episcopal 
Psalter  is  taken  from  Miles  Coverdale's  translation, 
made  by  order  of  Henry  VHI.,  and  published  in  1537, 
six  years  before  the  death  of  Copernicus  and  before  the 
publication  of  his  system  of  the  universe.  The  fables 
of  the  Pagan  religion  and  the  ignorance  of  science 
no  doubt  regarded  the  earth  as  a  flat  surface  ;  but  for 
nearly  three  thousand  years  the  Psalms  of  David  have 
taught  otherwise.  The  Bible  was  all  right,  whether 
the  Church  was  or  not." 

"Anyhow,"  remarked  the  Doctor,  "on  the  basis  of 
this  view  of  the  flat  structure  of  the  world  great  re- 
ligious systems  have  been  founded." 

"But  in  all  this,"  replied  the  Rector,  "systems  of 
religion  have  not  been  based  on  the  form  of  the 
world  at  all.  Science  misinformed  religion.  Claudius 
Ptolemy,  a  scientist  and  not  a  priest,  held  religion  to 
an  astronomical  error  for  thirteen  hundred  years, 
until  Copernicus,  a  monk  of  the  Church,  informed  re- 
ligion correctly  upon  the  subject."f 

*See  head-notes  to  Chap,  vi.,  Draper's  Conflict  between  Science 
and  Religion. 

f  Draper:  Conflict  between  Science  and  Religion,  p.  157. 


36  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  but  religion  resisted, 
sometimes  by  bloodshed,  attempts  that  have  been 
made  to  correct  its  incontestable  errors — a  resistance 
grounded  on  the  suspicion  that  the  localization  of 
heaven  and  hell,  and  the  supreme  value  of  man  in  the 
universe,  might  be  affected."* 

"It  is  a  virtue" of  religion,"  replied  the  Dean,  "to 
be  loyal  to  truth,  or  what  it  has  been  taught  to  be 
truth.  Scientific  convictions  are  no  more  tolerant 
than  religious.  The  world  and  the  cause  of  truth  is 
better  for  the  courage  of  convictions,  whether  right 
or  wrong,  than  without  it.  Religion  is  greedy  for 
truth.  The  greater  creation,  the  greater  is  the  Creator. 
Religion  rejoices  in  the  true  interpretation  of  nature, 
but  is  impatient  at  what  she  has  been  taught  to  regard 
as  misinterpretation.  Prompted  by  religion,  science 
has  perfected  knowledge." 

"As  some  think  exactly  the  reverse  to  be  true,''  re- 
marked the  host,  "  please  state  any  help  religion  has 
been  to  science,  directly  or  indirectly.' 

"  How  was  it,"  said  the  preacher,  "  about  architec- 
ture ?  Have  not  the  religions  of  the  past  inspired 
and  supported  all  its  development  ?  The  great  tem- 
ples were  votive  to  gods.  Without  the  religion  of 
the  past  the  world  would  not  have  had  the  temples 
of  the  past.  Nearly,  if  not  all,  of  the  great  astron- 
omers were  professors  of  the  Christian  religion." 

Francis  Galton  here  remarked  that  "  seven  out  of 
every  ten  scientists  of  the  present  day  were  members 
of  some  one  of  the  Christian  churches,  and  they  ad- 
mit help  from  religion. "f 

(<-?)    The  fourth  conflict  ivas  as  to  the  Criterion  of  Truth. 

*  Id.,  p.  155. 

f  See  Galton's  Men  of  Science. 


PROFESSOR  BLACKIE.  37 

"All  literary  confusion  and  darkness,"  said  the 
Doctor,  "  only  make  the  criterion  of  truth  the  more 
uncertain.  'What  is  truth  ?' was  the  passionate  de- 
mand of  a  Roman  procurator  on  one  of  the  most  mo- 
mentous occasions  in  history  ;  and  the  Divine  Per- 
son who  stood  before  him,  to  whom  the  interrogation 
was  addressed,  made  no  reply — unless,  indeed,  silence 
contained  the  reply.*  It  might  be  supposed  that  a 
revelation  from  God  to  man  would  make  all  certain, 
yet  even  as  to  revelation  how  uncertain  all  is." 

"  But,"  replied  the  preacher,  "it  is  difficult  for  men 
to  come  to  the  same  conclusion  as  regards  even  ma- 
terial and  visible  things,  unless  they  stand  at  the  same 
point  of  view.  God's  revealed  communication  to 
man  is  ever  one  and  the  same,  but  human  minds  differ 
in  thought,  and  so  differ  in  its  interpretation." 

"  It  is  this  very  difference  of  thought  and  interpre- 
tation," said  the  Doctor, "  that  makes  doubtful  the 
probability  of  such  a  revelation  at  all.  Besides,  what 
God  is  said  to  have  revealed  in  Scripture  and  what 
He  has  actually  revealed  in  nature  is  absolute  oppo- 
sition. The  Pentateuch  is  affirmed  to  have  been  writ- 
ten by  Moses,  under  the  influence  of  a  divine  inspira- 
tion ;  but  no  man  may  dare  to  impute  them  to  the 
inspiration  of  Almighty  God."f 

"  Bacon  was  quite  right,"  interposed  Professor 
Blackie,};  "when  he  tells  us  not  to  mix  theology  with 
science  ;  but  he  would  be  altogether  wrong  if  he 
were  to  tell  us  not  to  mix  up  theology  with  philos- 
ophy. Science  works  in  a  narrow  range,  and  has  no 
function   to  meddle  with  philosophical  and  theologi- 

*  Draper:  Conflict  between  Science  and    Religion,  ch.  viii. 

fib. 

X  Natural  History  of  Atheism,  p.  237. 


38  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

cal  questions  at  all.  The  question  of  design  or  the 
cause  of  things  is  a  philosophical  question,  and  the 
moment  a  scientific  man  either  asserts  or  denies  it, 
he  walks  out  of  his  proper  sphere,  and  is,  or  attempts 
to  be,  a  philosopher.  Science  investigates  only  facts, 
religion  or  theology  both  causes  and  ends,  and  there 
cannot  possibly  be,  in  the  nature  of  things,  any  con- 
flict between  them.     To  suppose  one,  is  to  force  it." 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  remarked  :  "  Doubtless  science 
is  the  enemy  of  the  superstitions  that  cloak  them- 
selves with  the  name  of  religion,  but  it  is  not  the 
enemy  of  the  essential  religion  which  the  superstitions 
darken.  Doubtless  in  the  science  of  to  day  there 
reigns  an  irreligious  spirit,  but  not  in  the  true  science, 
which,  not  stopping  at  the  surface,  penetrates  to  the 
depths  of  nature.  With  regard  to  human  traditions, 
and  the  authority  that  consecrates  them,  true  science 
maintains  a  lofty  attitude  ;  but  before  the  impene- 
trable veil  that  hides  the  absolute  it  humbles  itself: 
it  is  at  once  truly  proud  and  truly  humble.  The  sin- 
cere philosopher  alone  (and  by  these  words  we  mean 
not  the  astronomer,  who  computes  distances,  not  the 
naturalist,  who  defines  species,  but  he  who  through 
the  lower  seeks  the  higher,  to  stop  only  at  the  highest), 
the  sincere  philosopher  at  once  can  know  how  high — 
we  say  not  above  human  knowledge,  but  above  hu- 
man conception — is  the  universal  power,  whereof  nat- 
ure, like  thought,  is  a  manifestation." 

Professor  Tyndall  said  :  * 

"  If  asked  to  deduce  from  the  physical  interaction 
of  the  brain-molecules  the  least  of  the  phenomena  of 
sensation  or  thought,  we  must  acknowledge  our  help- 
lessness. 

*  Fortnightly  Review. 


DR.    VIRCHOW.  39 

"The  mechanical  philosopher,  as  such,  will  never 
place  a  state  of  consciousness  and  a  group  of  mole- 
cules in  the  relation  of  mover  and  moved.  In  passing 
from  the  one  to  the  other  we  meet  a  blank  which  the 
logic  of  deduction  is  unable  to  fill. 

"  Physical  considerations  do  not  lead  to  the  final 
explanation  of  all  that  we  feel  and  know.  We  meet  a 
problem  which  transcends  any  conceivable  expansion 
of  the  powers  which  we  now  possess. 

"  We  may  think  over  the  subject  again  and  again, 
but  it  eludes  all  intellectual  presentation. 

"  Having  thus  exhausted  physics  and  reached  its 
very  rim,  a  mighty  mystery  still  looms  beyond  us. 
We  have,  in  fact,  made  no  step  toward  its  solution. 
We  try  to  soar  in  a  vacuum  when  we  endeavor  to  pass 
by  logical  deduction  from  one  to  the  other. 

"  Religious  feeling  is  as  much  a  verity  as  any  other 
part  of  human  consciousness  ;  and  against  it,  on  its 
subjective  side,  the  waves  of  science  beat  in  vain. 

"  Carlyle's  contention  at  bottom  always  was  that  the 
human  soul  has  claims  and  yearnings  which  physical 
science  cannot  satisfy." 

"  It  seems  high  time  to  me,"  said  Dr.  Virchow,  "  to 
enter  an  energetic  protest  against  the  attempts  that 
are  made  to  proclaim  the  problems  of  research  as 
actual  facts,  and  the  opinions  of  scientists  as  estab- 
lished science. 

"  We  ought  not  to  represent  our  conjecture  as  a 
certainty,  nor  our  hypothesis  as  a  doctrine  :  this  is  in- 
admissible." 

"  The  burden  of  my  writing  in  this  connection," 
said  Prof.  T  ,  "is  as  much  a  recognition  of  the  weak- 
ness of  science  as  an  assertion  of  its  strength. 

"If  asked  whether  science  has  solved,  or  is  likely  in 


40  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

our  day  to  solve,  the  problem  of  the  universe,  I  must 
shake  my  head  in  doubt.  Behind  and  above  and 
around  us  the  real  mystery  of  the  universe  lies  un- 
solved, and,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned,  is  incapable 
of  solution.  The  problem  of  the  connection  of  body 
and  soul  is  as  insoluble  in  its  modern  form  as  it  was 
in  the  pre-scientific  ages. 

"  There  ought  to  be  a  clear  distinction  made  be- 
tween science  in  the  state  of  hypothesis  and  science  in 
the  state  of  fact. 

'■^  And  inasmuch  as  it  is  still  in  its  hypothetical 
stage,  the  ban  of  exclusion  ought  to  fall  upon  the 
theory  of  evolution. 

"  After  speaking  of  the  theory  of  evolution  applied 
to  the  primitive  condition  of  matter  as  belonging  to 
the  dim  twilight  of  conjecture,  the  certainty  of  experi- 
mental inquiry  is  here  shut  out. 

''  Those  who  hold  the  doctrine  of  evolution  are  by 
no  means  ignorant  of  the  uncertainty  of  their  data, 
and  they  only  yield  to  it  a  provisional  assent. 

"In  reply  to  your  question,  they  will  frankly  admit 
their  inability  to  point  to  any  satisfactory  experi- 
mental proof  that  life  can  be  developed  save  from 
demonstrable  antecedent  life. 

"  I  share  Dr.  Virchow's  opinion,  that  the  theory  of 
evolution  in  its  complete  form  involves  the  assump- 
tion that  at  some  period  or  other  of  the  earth's  his- 
tory there  occurred  what  would  now  be  called  spon- 
taneous generation.  I  agree  with  him  that  the  proofs 
of  it  are  still  wanting." 

"  Religion  and  the  Church  are  a  part  of  their  sur- 
roundings/' remarked  the  Dean,  as  if  changing  the 
subject. 

"And  why,"  interrupted  the  Doctor,  "do  they  not 


HYP  ATI  A.  41 

harmonize  their  surroundings  ?  They  had  all 
power." 

"■  Of  all  the  wars,  sufferings,  and  failures  in  the  past 
— if  God  in  Heaven,  consistent  with  their  free  will, 
could  not  harmonize  men,  the  Church  could  not  be 
expected  to  do  it.  The  Church  does  all  the  world  will 
let  it  do." 

"The  world,"  said  the  Doctor,  ''would  have  let  the 
Church  honor,  instead  of  destroying,  Hypatia." 

"  The  Church  did  not  destroy  Hypatia,"  firmly  re- 
marked the  Dean. 

"  You  astonish  me  !  "  ejaculated  the  Doctor. 

"So  far  from  it,"  replied  the  Dean,  "  Synesius, 
Bishop  of  Ptolemais,  was  Hypatia's  best  friend  and 
correspondent." 

"  Did  not  the  monks  kill  her  ? "  inquired  the  Doctor. 

"Yes,  but  not  because  she  was  learned,"  returned 
the  Dean,  "  The  monks  belonged  to  a  political  party 
at  Alexandria,  led  by  Cyril,  the  Bishop  ;  and  Hypatia 
was  supposed  to  belong  to  and  control  the  action  of 
the  other  political  party,  led  by  Orestes,  the  Roman 
Prefect.  The  passions  of  the  hour  made  both  sides  of 
these  political  parties  demoniac." 

"But  monks  ought  to  be  good  men,"  remarked  the 
Doctor,  with  a  quiet  smile. 

"A  monk  is  a  man  as  well  as  a  monk,"  replied  the 
Dean,  "  and  when  human  passion  is  aroused  we  see 
the  man  and  not  the  monk.  The  murder  of  Hypatia 
was  for  her  politics  and  not  for  her  learning." 

"I  am  sure,"  said  the  Doctor,  "you  have  conjec- 
tured no  such  excuse  for  the  persecution  of  Galileo 
for  saying  that  the  sun  was  the  centre  of  the  universe 
instead  of  the  earth." 

Sir  David  Brewster  remarked,  "  It  is  a  curious  fact 


42  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

in  the  annals  of  heresy  and  sedition  that  opinions 
maintained  with  impunity  by  one  individual  have  in 
the  same  age  brought  others  to  the  stake  or  to  the 
scaffold.  The  results  of  deep  research  or  extravagant 
speculation  seldom  provoke  hostility  when  meekly  an- 
nounced as  the  deductions  of  reason  or  the  convictions 
of  conscience.  As  the  dreams  of  a  recluse  or  an  en- 
thusiast, they  may  excite  pity  or  call  forth  contempt ; 
but  like  seed  quietly  cast  into  the  earth,  they  will 
rot  and  germinate  according  to  the  vitality  with 
which  they  are  endowed.  But  if  new  and  startling 
opinions  are  thrown  in  the  face  of  the  community — if 
they  are  uttered  in  triumph  or  insolence,  in  contempt 
of  public  opinion,  or  in  derision  of  cherished  errors — 
they  lose  the  comeliness  of  truth  in  the  rancor  of  their 
propagation  ;  and  they  are  like  seed  scattered  in  the 
hurricane,  which  only  irritate  and  blind  the  husband- 
man. Had  Galileo  concluded  his  system  of  the  world 
with  the  quiet  peroration  of  his  apologist,  Campanella, 
and  dedicated  it  to  the  Pope,  it  might  have  stood  in 
the  library  of  the  Vatican  beside  the  cherished,  though 
equally  heretical,  volume  of  Copernicus.  One  of  the 
most  prominent  trials  in  the  character  of  Galileo  was 
his  invincible  love  of  truth  and  his  abhorrence  of  that 
spiritual  despotism  which  had  so  long  lorded  over 
Europe.  His  views,  however,  were  liberal,  and  too 
far  in  advance  of  his  age,  which  he  adorned  ;  and 
however  much  we  may  admire  the  noble  spirit  which 
he  evinced,  and  the  personal  sacrifices  which  he  made  in 
his  struggle  for  truth,  we  must  yet  lament  that  in  his 
contest  with  the  Church  of  Rome,  in  the  hotness  of 
his  zeal  and  the  tenacity  of  his  onset,  he  fell  under 
her  victorious  banner  ;  and  though  his  cause  was  that 
of  truth  against  superstition,  yet  the  sympathy  of  Eu- 


GALILEO.  43 

rope  was  not  aroused  by  his  misfortune.  Under  the 
sagacious  and  peaceful  sway  of  Copernicus,  astronomy 
had  effected  a  glorious  triumph  over  the  dogmas  of  the 
Church,  but  under  the  bold  and  uncompromising  scep- 
tre of  Galileo,  all  her  conquests  were  irretrievably  lost." 

''  The  persecution  of  Galileo  by  the  Church,"  said 
the  Doctor,  ^' was  the  more  criminal,  whatever  his  im- 
petuosity, because  Christianity  had  been  in  existence 
for  fifteen  hundred  years  and  had  not  produced  a 
single  astronomer." 

"Had  science  produced  one?"  asked  the  Dean. 
''The  business  of  religion  is  to  produce  moral  and 
spiritual  teachers,  not  scientists.  But  out  of  the  mon- 
asteries of  those  monks  so  offending  in  the  eyes  of 
some  came,  in  the  tenth  century,  Gobert,  afterwards 
Pope  Sylvester  II.,  and  Herman  Contractus,  a  monk 
of  St.  Gall,  Switzerland,  celebrated  for  astronomical 
learning.  Robert  of  Lorraine  was  made  Bishop  of 
Hereford  by  William  the  Conqueror  for  his  knowl- 
edge of  astronomy,  and  Robert  Grostete,  Bishop  of 
Lincoln,  published  a  treatise  on  the  sphere.  Coper- 
nicus, a  monk,  after  fourteen  centuries  of  scientific 
error,  gave  the  truth  to  the  world  for  all  after-time." 

"  It  is  singular  if,  as  you  say,"  replied  the  Doctor, 
"  the  Church  produced  astronomers  and  established 
schools  and  libraries,  that  for  a  thousand  years  it  did 
so  little  to  improve  the  material  condition  of  man- 
kind. The  surface  of  the  continent  of  Europe  was, 
for  the  most  part,  all  this  time  covered  with  pathless 
forests  ;  here  and  there  it  was  dotted  with  monas- 
teries and  towns.  In  the  lowlands  and  all  along  the 
river-courses  were  fens,  sometimes  hundreds  of  miles 
in  extent,  exhaling  their  pestiferous  miasms,  and 
spreading  agues  far  and  wide.     In  Paris  and  London 


44  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

the  houses  were  of  wood  daubed  with  clay,  and 
thatched  with  straws  or  reeds.  They  had  no  windows, 
and  until  the  invention  of  the  saw-mill  very  few  had 
wooden  floors.  The  luxury  of  a  carpet  was  unknown; 
some  straw  scattered  in  the  room  supplied  its  place. 
There  were  no  chimneys  ;  the  smoke  of  the  ill-fed, 
cheerless  fire  escaped  through  a  hole  in  the  roof.  No 
attempt  was  made  at  drainage.  Men,  women,  and 
children  slept  in  the  same  apartment  ;  not  infre- 
quently domestic  animals  were  their  companions.  In 
such  confusion  of  the  fam.ily  it  was  impossible  that 
modesty  or  morality  could  be  maintained.  The  bed 
was  usually  a  bag  of  straw  ;  a  wooden  log  served  as 
a  pillow.  Personal  cleanliness  was  utterly  unknown. 
To  conceal  impurity,  perfumes  were  necessarily  and 
profusely  used.  The  streets  were  without  lamps  or 
pavement.*  Why  did  not  religion  improve  human 
condition  ? " 

'' Why,"  replied  the  Dean,  "did  not  science  do 
it  ?  Mankind,  whether  in  science  or  religion,  does 
but  one  thing  at  a  time.  The  dominant  activity  of 
the  five  hundred  years  before  Christ  and  the  thousand 
years  after,  was  war.  There  were  the  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years'  war  out  of  the  five  hundred  of  the 
Roman  republic  B.  C;  there  were  the  wars  of  the  Em- 
pire ;  there  were  the  ten  or  more  persecutions  of  the 
Christians  ;  the  wars  of  Charlemagne,  and  the  Cru- 
sades. Nations  would  fight  in  spite  of  religion.  The 
present  arts  of  civilization  were  impossible.  Their 
era  had  not  come." 

*'  But,"  insisted  the  Doctor,  "  however  powerless  re- 
ligion was  in  the  practical  arts,  certainly  no  such  plea 
could  be  offered  for  its  inefficiency  in  letters.     The 

*  Draper:  Conflict  between  Science  and  Religion,  p.  264. 


HALL  AM.  45 

priests  were  not  warriors,  nor  laborers  ;  their  lives, 
after  the  rise  of  monasteries,  were  cloistered,  and  if 
they  were  not  learned  they  ought  to  have  been,  and 
ought  to  have  educated  the  people  ;  but  the  Church 
was  as  unproductive  in  letters  as  in  arts." 

"You  know,"  said  the  Dean,  in  reply,  "that  Latin 
ceased  to  be  a  spoken  language  some  time  in  the 
fifth  century.  In  that  language  and  in  the  Greek  was 
all  the  learning  of  the  past.  The  northern  nations, 
out  of  which  were  formed  the  modern,  knew  neither. 
The  new  modern  languages  had  to  be  formed  out  of 
the  old  before  the  literature  of  the  old  could  be  made 
known  in  the  new.  This  was  a  thing  of  the  centuries. 
There  was  no  papyrus  imported  into  Europe,  and  pa- 
per was  not  manufactured.  There  were  but  few 
books  in  manuscript  accessible  even  to  the  clergy  ;  no 
printing  press  and  no  circulating  libraries  as  now." 

Mr.  Henry  Hallam  *  here  said,  that,  "  If  it  be  de- 
manded by  what  cause  it  happened  that  a  few  sparks 
of  ancient  learning  survived  throughout  this  long 
winter,  we  can  only  abscribe  their  preservation  to  the 
establishment  of  Christianity.  Religion  alone  made 
a  bridge,  as  it  were,  across  the  chaos,  and  has  linked 
the  two  periods  of  ancient  and  modern  civilization. 
It  is  not,  however,  from  religion  simply  that  we  have 
derived  this  advantage,  but  from  religion  as  it  was 
modified  in  the  dark  ages.  Such  is  the  complex  re- 
ciprocation of  good  and  evil  in  the  dispensations  of 
Providence,  that  we  may  assert,  with  only  an  appar- 
ent paradox,  that  had  religion  been  more  pure  it 
would  have  been  less  permanent,  and  that  Christian- 
ity has  been  preserved  by  means  of  its  corruptions. 
The  sole  hope  of  literature  depended   on  the  Latin 

*  Middle  Age,  ch.  ix. 


46  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

language  ;  and  I  do  not  see  why  that  should  not 
have  been  lost  if  three  circumstances  in  the  prevailing 
religious  systems,  all  of  which  we  are  justly  accus- 
tomed to  disapprove,  had  not  conspired  to  maintain 
it :  the  papal  supremacy,  the  monastic  institutions, 
and  the  use  of  a  Latin  liturgy.*  The  first  kept  up 
communication  between  the  nations  of  the  world, 
and  carried  the  Latin  tongue,  in  which  were  locked 
up  the  learning  of  the  past,  to  all  lands  ;  her  laws 
were  received  by  the  bishops,  her  legates  presided  in 
councils,  so  that  a  common  language  was  necessary 
in  the  Church  as  in  diplomacy.  The  monasteries, 
amid  wars  and  the  transformation  of  nations,  were 
the  only  cabinets  of  study,  and  the  worship  of  the  lit- 
urgy made  the  Latin  sacred,  and  preserved  the  lan- 
guage and  its  precious  literature." 

3.  Bible   Criticised. — Ingersoll. 

The  host  here  turned  to  Col.  Ingersoll  and  said  to 
him,  "  I  dissent  from  what  the  papers  make  you  say 
about  the  Bible  and  the  domestic  relations,  especially 
about  woman." 

"There  is  not  one  word,"  said  Col.  Ingersoll, 
^^  about  woman  in  the  Old  Testament,  except  the 
word  of  shame  and  humiliation.  The  God  of  the 
Bible  does  not  think  woman  is  as  good  as  man.  She 
was  never  worth  mentioning.  If  there  is  any  God  in 
the  universe  who  thinks  more  of  me  than  he  does  of 
my  wife,  he  is  not  well  acquainted  with   both  of  us." 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you,"  remarked  an  English 
gentleman  present.  "  I  have  never  had  the  pleasure 
of  meeting  with  your  wife,  but  there  must  be,  as  you 
say,  a  difference  between  you.     You  see  that  it  is  not 

*Hallam,  lb. 


DR.  RICHARDSON.  47 

every  n:an  that  God  thinks  better   or   stronger  than 
woman." 

''The  gentleman  assails,"  said  Rev.  Dr.  N.  S. 
Richardson,  ''  the  Bible  as  encouraging  concubin- 
age and  polygamy.  His  charges  are  misleading.  The 
patriarchs  had  no  Bible.  The  Bible  only  records 
what  they  did.  Concubinage  and  polygamy  amid 
the  sparse  population  of  those  times  were  universal. 
The  Mosaical  laws  were  based  on  this  established 
usage.  To  prevent  greater  social  wrongs,  it  per- 
mitted under  very  severe  restrictions  that  which  it 
could  not  prevent.  The  motives  leading  to  these 
evils  were  then  of  a  lofty  nature.  There  were  reasons 
for  both  that  do  not  exist  to-day.  The  concubine 
was  not  a  mistress,  but  a  betrothed  and  secondary 
wife,  with  well-protected  legal  rights.  But  the  New 
Testament  dispensation,  overshadowing  the  Old  in 
its  claims  on  our  faith  and  practice,  classes  these 
social  evils  as  fornication  and  adultery.  John  the 
Baptist  lost  his  life  for  assailing  them  in  a  royal 
palace.  Amid  surrounding  polygamy  Paul  says  of 
the  marital  relations  of  a  minister:  'Let  a  Bishop  be 
the  husband  of  one  wife'  Wherever  the  Bible  has  be- 
come the  standard  of  morals  these  evils  have  gradu- 
all}^  disappeared.  Christianity  has  been  the  pioneer 
of  monogamy  throughout  the  world.  To  find  legal- 
ized concubinage  and  polygamy  to-day,  the  gentle- 
man must  pass  out  of  Bible-reading  provinces  and 
enter  the  harems  of  Mohammedanism,  the  zananas  of 
Hindooism,  or  the  law-protected  bagnios  of  Utah. 
The  gentleman  speaks  of  the  Bible  as  grossly  un- 
friendly to  the  rights  of  childhood  and  womanhood. 
Surely  he  cannot  be  sincere.  What  protection  has 
childhood  beyond  the  pale  of  Bible  civilization  ?    The 


48  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

Greeks  murdered  maimed  infants.  Plato  defended 
the  custom,  clamoring  for  '  the  survival  of  the  fittest.' 
The  Carthaginians  laid  their  youngest-born  on  the 
outstretched  hands  of  their  idol  god,  who  dropped 
the  wondering  innocent  into  the  fires  below.  Spartan 
legislation  compelled  parents  to  cast  their  sickly  in- 
fants into  the  cavern  that  yawned  at  the  base  of  Mount 
Taygetus.  Roman  law  permitted  fathers  to  murder 
their  offspring  at  pleasure.  The  Norsemen  gave  un- 
promising nurslings  to  the  wild  beasts  of  the  forests. 
China  for  ages  has  legalized  the  assassination  of  one- 
third  of  its  infant  population.  In  Fiji  and  the  South 
Sea  Islands,  infanticide  is  incorporated  into  religious 
worship.  In  India,  millions  of  children  have  been 
fed  to  the  crocodiles  of  the  Ganges.  The  Marquis  of 
Wellesley,  representing  a  great  Christian  government, 
with  difficulty  checked  the  alarming  child-murder 
prevailing  throughout  Hindostan.  The  Bible  the 
foe  of  childhood  !  Tell  it  to  millions  of  Sunday- 
school  scholars,  whose  faces  beam  with  joy  as  they 
study  its  contents'  or  carol  its  doctrines  in  song. 
Was  it  Moses,  or  was  it  Zoroaster,  Plato,  or  Zeno  who 
provided  in  their  religious  systems  for  the  rights  of 
children  ?  Was  it  Christ,  or  was  it  Confucius,  Aris- 
totle, or  Pythagoras  who  said,  '  Suffer  little  children 
to  come  unto  Me,  and  forbid  them  not,  for  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  ?'  Where  but  in  the  courts  of 
Christian  governments  is  the  slaughter  of  bastards 
ranked  with  murder  ?  Where  but  on  their  soil  are 
found  asylums  for  foundlings,  orphans,  and  homeless 
little  ones  ? 

''  The  Bible  the  adversary  of  woman  !  What  is  the 
condition  of  woman  in  every  nation  where  this  book 
has  not  been   scattered  ?    In   everv  Oriental  and  un- 


MR.  INGERSOLL.  49 

christian  province  woman  has  ever  been,  and  is  to- 
day, either  the  beast  of  burden  or  the  incarcerated 
slave  of  passion.  What  honor  does  the  Zend  Avesta, 
the  Koran,  the  Vedas,  the  Shasters,  or  the  sacred 
books  of  any  heathen  nation  bestow  on  woman  ?  Tell 
it  to  the  intellectual  princesses  who  are  crowding 
into  all  the  higher  professions  and  bearing  off  the 
honors  of  colleges  and  universities.  Tell  it  to  the 
female  leaders  of  the  temperance  crusades,  before 
whose  tears  and  prayers  iron-hearted  venders  of 
strong  drink  trembled  and  surrendered.  Tell  it  to 
the  queenly  authors  of  modern  literature,  and  the 
graceful  orators  of  the  fair  sex  whose  silvery  voices 
are  captivating  cities.  What  the  women  of  Christian 
lands  are  to-day,  they  owe  to  the  influence  of  the 
Bible."  * 

Mr.  Ingersoll  remarked,  with  some  asperity,  that 
''  God  believed  in  the  infamy  of  slavery." 

The  Dean  asked,  "  Then  why  did  God  deliver  the 
Israelites  from  slavery  ?  " 

Dr.  Richardson  replied  further,  "  Col.  Ingersoll 
charges  the  Bible  with  supporting  slavery,  concubin- 
age, and  polygamy.  Such  accusations  are  deceptive, 
and  calculated  to  mislead.  In  patriarchal,  prophet- 
ical, and  apostolical  times  slavery  was  universal.  Cap- 
tives in  war  and  purchased  human  beings  were  in 
involuntary  servitude  in  all  Oriental  and  civilized 
lands.  Grecian  and  Roman  history  tell  us  of  the 
rigor  of  slavery  at  Athens,  Corinth,  and  Rome.  The 
horrors  of  pagan  slavery  stirred  early  the  heart  of 
Justinian,  and  he  struggled  for  its  niodification.  The 
parents  of  Oriental  lands  even  sold  their  children  to 
the  citizens  along  the  Mediterranean.     The  primitive 

*  The  Guardian,  Dec.  13,  1879  (edited  by  Dr.  Richardson). 


50  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

slave  trade  was  frightful  in  extent.  The  master  held 
the  life  of  the  servant  both  absolutely  and  in  per- 
petuity. Chained  slaves  opened  the  doors  of  Roman 
mansions  in  the  days  of  Augustus.  Countless  were 
those  who  fell  under  the  knife  of  the  gladiator  and 
the  teeth  of  wild  beasts  in  the  games  of  the  Coliseum. 
Roman  laws  knew  no  recognized  relation  between 
the  bondman  and  his  wife  or  children.  Vedius  Pollio 
fed  the  lampreys  of  his  fish-ponds  on  gray-haired 
servants.  It  was  a  common  usage  to  send  old  slaves 
to  an  island  in  the  Tiber  to  perish. 

"  But  the  slavery  of  the  Hebrews  was  of  a  different 
type.  While  abolition  was  then  impracticable,  and 
perhaps  impossible,  the  Mosaical  laws,  divinely  in- 
spired, modified  amazingly  the  evils  of  the  S3^stem. 
Moses,  that  illustrious  seer  against  whom  Mr.  Inger- 
soll  levels  in  his  various  satires  the  artillery  of  his 
wit,  provided  for  the  regulation  of  involuntary  servi- 
tude according  to  the  ethics  of  religion  and  human- 
ity. .  .  .  The  least  objectionable  type  of  slavery 
on  which  the  sun  has  shone  was  that  of  the  Jews.  It 
was  never  perpetual.  Periods  of  emancipation  were 
frequent.  The  slave  always  had  the  right  of  appeal 
to  the  tribunals.  His  religious  privileges  suffered  no 
restrictions.  He  could  at  any  time,  on  the  payment 
of  ransom  money,  demand  release.  Human  laws 
gave  him  protection.  Mutilation  insured  his  instant 
freedom. 

''The  spirit  of  the  Bible  is  against  oppression.  It 
steadily  presents  mankind  as  a  universal  brotherhood. 
It  swings  back  on  their  golden  hinges  the  great  doors 
of  the  temple  of  Freedom,  and  welcomes  all  alike  to 
*  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,' 

"  While  the  Greek   philosophers   defended  slavery 


QUEEN  VICTORIA.  51 

the  men  who  have  reverenced  the  Bible  have  been 
gradually  and  long  marshaling  agencies  for  its  uni- 
versal extinction.  The  Christian  Church  early 
pioneered  the  way  for  general  emancipation.  It  ex- 
communicated cruel  masters  in  its  periods  of  greatest 
peril.  It  placed  Wilberforce,  Dellwyn,  Pitt,  Clarkson, 
and  Sharp  at  the  front  of  the  host  who  have  struck 
perseveringly  and  successfully  for  human  freedom.  It 
influenced  Alexander  II.  of  Russia,  but  fifteen  years 
ago,  to  abolish  serfdom  throughout  his  vast  empire."* 

"Recently,  Her  Majesty  Queen  Victoria,"  re- 
marked the  Englishman,  "  said  to  an  African  prince 
investigating  the  foundations  of  England's  glory, 
'  The  Bible  is  the  secret  of  my  country's  greatness  ! '  '' 

'^  Allow  me  to  say,"  continued  Dr.  Richardson, 
"  Christianity  has  given  the  world  its  schools,  col- 
leges, and  universities.  With  but  few  exceptions,  the 
men  whose  names  are  immortal  in  authorship  have 
reverenced  the  Bible.  The  libraries  of  the  world 
groan  under  the  literary  work  of  Christian  men.  The 
antagonists  of  the  Bible  who  have  been  moderately 
conspicuous  for  knowledge  are  comparatively  few  in 
number.  Their  works  would  hardly  fill  a  cabinet 
bookcase.  Their  volumes  lie  as  untouched  on  the 
shelves  of  the  world's  literary  museums  as  the  bones 
of  the  dead  in  the  niches  of  the  catacombs.  To  count 
the  men  of  learning  the  plume  of  whose  glory  has 
been  their  faith  in  Christ  and  the  Bible  would  tax  an 
angel's  patience.  It  is  in  those  countries  where  the 
Bible  is  studied  that  art,  science,  and  learning  make 
recognized  progress.  A  long  line  of  poets,  philoso- 
phers, historians,  linguists,  statesmen,  scientists,  and 
other  distinguished  men  have   bequeathed  to  us  their 

*  The  Guardian,  lb. 


52  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

exalted  estimates  of  the  Bible.  Even  Napoleon  has 
written:  'The  loftiest  intellects  since  the  advent  of 
Christianity  have  had  a  practical  faith  in  the  mys- 
teries and  doctrines  of  the  Gospel.'  The  innumer- 
able and  eloquent  tributes  of  hundreds  of  finely 
educated  ministers  as  to  the  worth  of  the  Bible  we 
can  afford  to  lay  aside  amid  the  wealth  of  eulogiums 
given  by  men  of  learning  who  have  never  stood  in 
the  pulpit." 

Sir  William  Jones,  bowing  toward  the  host,  re- 
marked, ''  I  am  of  opinion  that  the  Bible  contains 
more  true  sensibility,  more  exquisite  beauty,  more 
pure  morality,  more  important  history,  and  finer 
strains  of  poetry  and  eloquence,  than  can  be  collected 
from  all  other  books,  in  whatever  age  or  language 
they  may  be  written." 

John  Locke  also  added  the  opinion  that,  "  In  mo- 
rality there  are  books  enough  written,  both  by  ancient 
and  modern  philosophers,  but  the  morality  of  the 
Gospel  doth  so  exceed  them  all  that  to  give  a  man  a 
full  knowledge  of  true  morality  I  shall  send  him  to 
no  other  book  than  the  New  Testament." 

Dr.  Richardson  went  on,  saying,  "  Dr.  Samuel  John- 
son, Sir  Walter  Scott,  John  Milton,  Lord  Bacon,  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  Guizot,  Judge  Story,  Daniel  Webster 
and  an  innumerable  company  of  great  men  have  laid 
on  the  lids  of  this  book  tributes  as  comprehensive 
and  passionate  as  those  quoted.  Scientists  like  Prof. 
Guyot,  Hugh  Miller,  Sir  John  Herschel,  Prof.  Henry, 
J.  Pye  Smith,  Sir  David  Brewster,  Prof.  Mason,  Dr. 
Pritchard  and  others  eminent  in  the  department  of 
astronomy,  geology  and  other  sciences  have  honored 
the  contents  of  this  peerless  book.  Poets  such  as 
Scott,    Pollok,  Young,  Dryden,  Cowper  and  many  of 


THE   BIBLE.  53 

their  compeers  in  song  have  poured  out  in  verse  their 
affection  for  the  Bible.  Even  avowed  skeptics,  such 
as  Diderot,  of  France,  Edward  Gibbon  and  Theodore 
Parker,  have  written  paragraphs  that  are  preserved 
as  encomiums  of  the  Scriptures." 

The  host  said  that  Rousseau  paid  to  God's  Word 
this  panegyric  :  ''  Peruse  the  works  of  philosophers, 
with  all  their  pomp  and  diction — how  contemptible 
are  they  compared  with  the  Scriptures  !  The  majesty 
of  the  Scriptures  strikes  me  with  admiration." 

''And  yet,"  said  Dr.  Richardson,  "on  this  book  the 
oracles  of  science,  the  sages  of  philosophy,  the  crowned 
kings  in  varied  erudition,  and  the  vast  congress  of  the 
world's  litei^ati  have  piled  their  eulogies  until  they 
have  seemed  to  kiss  the  clouds.  This  is  the  volume 
that  has  been  represented  as  encircling  the  portrait 
of  a  bloodthirsty  God,  as  requiring  human  faith  in  a 
multitude  of  absurdities,  as  unworthy,  because  of  its 
immorality,  to  have  a  place  in  the  public  schools,  and 
as  the  chief  enemy  of  progress  in  culture,  civilization 
and  liberty.  But  reason  and  history  assert  that  the 
world  needed  an  inspired  and  written  revelation 
from  God.  What  did  reason  and  nature  teach  con- 
cerning God's  attributes,  human  duty,  the  way  of  sal- 
vation and  human  destiny  ?  Go  back  to  the  golden 
age  of  civilization.  What  did  Pericles  and  Augustus, 
Cicero  and  Homer,  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  know 
concerning  such  subjects  as  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  eternal  rewards 
and  punishments  ?" 

Some  one  answered,  "Their  systems  abounded  with 
abominations.  Their  altars  smoked  amid  debauchery 
and  licentiousness.  Rome  and  Greece  in  their  high- 
est   refinement  were    the    theatres    of   nameless   and 

[5] 


54  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

unrestricted  iniquities.  Only  occasionally  some  splen- 
did man,  like  Socrates,  would  stand  out  morally  supe- 
rior to  his  surroundings,  as  some  truant  star  beaming 
in  solitude  from  a  sky  of  otherwise  unbroken  black- 
ness. Egypt,  claiming  to  be  the  intellectual  teacher 
of  the  world,  worshipped  oxen,  reptiles  and  birds. 
Phoenicia,  Persia  and  Syria  constantly  offered  human 
sacrifices  to  inanimate  deities.  The  Druid  priests  of 
Great  Britain  bathed  their  knives  in  human  hearts  in 
worship.  Even  in  a  recent  century  the  monarchs  of 
Mexico  offered  annually  twenty  thousand  stalwart 
men  to  the  sun,  under  the  dripping  knife.  The  world, 
outside  of  Palestine,  was  sunk  in  crime  and  environed 
with  moral  gloom.  No  pagan  system  could  free  men 
from  sensualism." 

"Then,"  replied  Dr.  Richardson,  "God  inspired 
holy  men  to  communicate  His  will  and  to  write  '  as 
they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost.'  The  Divine 
Spirit  overshadowed  the  thought  and  guided  the 
pens  of  the  authors  of  the  sacred  books  from  Moses 
to  John.  They  held  the  trumpets  through  which  God 
has  spoken  to  the  nations.  For  eighteen  centuries 
the  best-educated  men  have  accepted  this  volume  as 
containing  the  '  Oracles  of  God.'  The  substantial 
agreement  of  fourteen  hundred  manuscript  copies  of 
the  New  Testament  assures  us  that  the  mistakes  of 
transcribers  have  not  materially  impaired  the  sense 
of  the  original  writers.  The  fifty-four  learned  men 
who  gave  us  our  version  of  the  Bible  were  masters 
in  Hebrew  learning  and  Greek  literature.  Because 
Greece  claimed  to  have  a  sentence  received  from 
heaven,  she  gilded  it  in  gratitude  on  the  front  of  her 
finest  temple.  From  Genesis  to  Revelation  we  have 
an  infallible,  inspired  Book.     '  The  grass  withereth  and 


PROF.    HUXLEY.  55 

the  flower  thereof  falleth  away,  but  the  Word  of  our 
God  shall  stand  forever.'  But  some  gentlemen  can 
discern  no  reason  why  the  lost  and  mapless  mariners 
on  the  sea  of  Time  needed  this  chart ;  why  mankind 
wanted  this  sun  on  their  benighted  sky  ;  why  the  im- 
poverished race  desired  this  inexhaustible  mine  of 
wealth."* 

During  these  remarks  of  Dr.  Richardson  our  host 
kept  his  eye  on  Col.  I.,  who  sat  near  the  speaker.  He 
was  all  ready,  when  the  Doctor  stopped,  to  enter 
warmly  into  the  lists.  Bowing  toward  the  host,  he 
said,  ''  I  regret  to  differ  in  opinion  from  our  distin- 
guished visitor  ;  but  to  me  no  book  of  all  books  is 
more  objectionable  for  school  or  any  other  use.  The 
advance  of  civilization  requires  that  the  Church  shall 
stand  aside  forever,  and  let  reason  finally  rule  the 
world.  Secularize  education  and  it  will  advance,  but 
not  without." 

"  I  have  always,"  mildly  replied  Professor  Huxley, 
''been  strongly  in  favor  of  secular  education,  in  the 
sense  of  education  without  theology.  But  I  must 
confess  I  have  been  no  less  seriously  perplexed  to 
know  by  what  practical  measures  the  religious  feel- 
ing, which  is  the  essential  basis  of  conduct,  was  to  be 
kept  up,  in  the  present  utterly  chaotic  state  of  opinion 
on  these  matters,  without  the  use  of  the  Bible.  The 
Pagan  moralists  lack  life  and  color,  and  even  the 
noble  stoic  Marcus  Antoninus  is  too  high  and  refined 
for  an  ordinary  child."  f 

"And  could  you  reject  the  refined  words  of  that 
great  stoic,"  said  Mr.  Ingersoll,  "and  put  in  the  hands 
of  a  child  the  horrible,  indecent  stories  of  the  Bible?" 

fib.  51. 


56  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

"Still,"  replied  the  Professor,  "take  the  Bible  as  a 
whole,  make  the  severest  deductions  which  fair  criti- 
cism can  dictate  for  shortcomings  and  positive  errors, 
eliminate,  as  a  sensible  lay-teacher  would  do  if  left  to 
himself,  all  that  is  not  desirable  for  children  to  occupy 
themselves  with,  and  there  still  remains  in  this  old 
literature  a  vast  residuum  of  moral  beauty  and 
grandeur.  And  then  consider  the  great  historical 
fact  that  for  three  centuries  this  book  has  been 
w^oven  into  the  life  of  all  that  is  best  and  noblest  in 
English  history  ;  that  it  has  become  the  national  epic 
of  Britain,  and  is  as  familiar  to  noble  and  simple,  from 
John-o'-Groat's  House  to  Land's  End,  as  Dante  and 
Tasso  once  were  to  the  Italians  ;  that  it  is  written  in 
the  noblest  and  purest  English,  and  abounds  in  ex- 
quisite beauties  of  mere  literary  form  ;  and  finally, 
that  it  forbids  the  veriest  hind  who  never  left  his  vil- 
lage to  be  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  other  countries 
and  other  civilizations,  and  of  a  great  past,  stretching 
back  to  the  furthest  limits  of  the  oldest  nations  in  the 
world.  By  the  study  of  what  other  book  could  chil- 
dren be  so  much  humanized  and  made  to  feel  that 
each  figure  in  the  vast  historical  procession  fills,  like 
themselves,  but  a  momentary  space  in  the  interval  of 
two  extremities,  and  earns  the  blessings  or  the  curses 
of  all  time  according  to  its  efforts  to  do  good  or  hate 
evil,  even  as  they  also  are  earning  their  payment  for 
their  work  ?  "  * 

For  a  moment  there  was  silence  up  and  down  the 
table  after  such  emphatic  and  eloquent  words  for  the 
Bible.  But  Colonel  Ingersoll  was  not  done.  It  was 
not  exactly  the  company  for  his  peculiar  style  of  talk 
and    choice  of    words,   and    especially  as    they  were 

*  Critiques  and  Address,  p.  51. 


SIR  J.  STEPHEN.  57 

mindful  of  what  three  thousand  years  had  held  in  rev- 
erence.     But  he  was  irrepressible,  and  said  : 

"  Still,  where  this  Bible  has  been,  man  has  hated  his 
brother — there  have  been  dungeons,  racks,  thumb- 
screws and  the  sword."  * 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Dean,  "  and  there  have  been 
floods  and  famines,  and  droughts  and  conflagrations, 
and  profanities  and  frauds  ;  but  did  the  Bible  cause 
all  that  happened  after  it  was  given  to  the  world  ? 
Can  any  one  say  that  the  injustice  and  cruelties  and 
impurities  of  the  world  are  taught  and  commanded 
in  the  Bible  ?  Can  the  teachings  of  a  book  be  so  hor- 
rible that  says,  '  Love  your  enemies  ;  be  merciful,  as 
your  Father  in  heaven  is  merciful  ;  be  pitiful  ;  be 
courteous  ;  honor  all  men  ;   blessed  are  the  poor?'  " 

4.   Sociological  Drift. 

{a)  A  Morality  of  Philosophy  without  Religion. 

"  What  do  you  think.  Sir  James  Stephen,"  asked  the 
host,  "  of  the  assumed  antagonism  between  theology 
and  morality  ?  Many  persons,  you  know,  regard 
everything  which  tends  to  discredit  theology  with 
disapprobation,  because  they  think  that  all  such 
speculations  must  endanger  morality  as  well.  Others 
assert  that  morality  has  a  basis  of  its  own  in  human 
nature,  and  that  even  if  all  theological  belief  were 
exploded  morality  would  remain  unaffected." 

''  My  own  view,"  answered  Sir  James  Stephen,  ''  is 
that  each  part  is  to  a  considerable  extent  right,  but 
that  the  true  practical  inference  is  often  neglected. 
Understanding  by  the  theology  of  an  age  or  country 
the  theory  of  the  universe  generally  accepted  then 
and  there,  and  by  its  morality  the  rules  of  life  then 
and  there  commonly  regarded  as  binding,  it  seems  to 

*  Ingersoll  :  Mistakes  of  Moses,  p.  15. 


'"58  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

me  extravagant  to  say  that  the  one  does  not  influence 
the  other.  A  vast  majority  of  people  believe  that  the 
course  of  the  world  is  ordered  by  a  good  God,  that 
right  and  wrong  are  in  the  nature  of  a  divine  law,  and 
that  this  world  is  a  place  of  trial,  and  part  only  of  a 
wider  existence  ;  and  we  may  call  this  belief  theol- 
ogy. On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  at  least  equally 
evident  that  morality  has  a  basis  of  its  own  quite  in- 
dependent of  all  theology  whatever.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  any  doctrine  about  theology  which  has  not 
prevailed  at  some  time  or  place  ;  but  no  one  ever 
heard  of  men  living  together  without  some  rules  of 
life — that  is,  without  some  sort  of  morality." 

''But,"  said  the  Dean,  "was  not  that  morality 
the  practical  side  of  the  prevailing  theology  ?  Mo- 
rality is  life  among  men.  Religion  (theology)  is  life 
toward  God,  and  both  are  as  much  one  as  is  the  inside 
and  outside  of  any  kind  of  seed,  or  the  concavity  and 
convexity  of  a  curved  line,  and  to  destroy  either  is  to 
destroy  both." 

"  I  admit,"  said  Sir  James,  "  that  the  destruction  of 
religion  would  involve  a  moral  revolution  ;  but  it 
would  no  more  destroy  morality  than  apolitical  revo- 
lution would  destroy  law.  It  would  substitute  one 
set  of  moral  rules  and  sentiments  for  another,  just  as 
the  establishment  of  Christianity  and  Mohammedan- 
ism did  when  they  superseded  various  forms  of  Pagan- 
ism." 

"  Your  admission,"  remarked  the  Dean,  "  seems 
to  refute  your  theory.  Substitution  is,  practically, 
the  destruction  of  the  thing  substituted.  If,  by  a  de- 
struction of  religion,  you  bring  in  a  set  of  moral  rules 
not  based  on  religion,  do  you  not  destroy  those  moral 
rules  that  were  so  based  ?  " 


PROF.    CLIFFORD.  59 

"I  do  not  think,"  interposed  Mr.  Martineau,  ''that 
the  form  and  contents  of  a  moral  system  would  be  es- 
sentially modified  by  the  decline  of  religious  belief. 
It  may,  no  doubt,  happen  that  particular  problems  of 
conduct,  as  in  the  case  of  suicide  and  marriage,  have 
become  the  subject  of  ecclesiastical  legislation,  and 
so  have  passed  into  preoccupation  of  religious  feeling, 
and  on  the  disappearance  of  that  feeling  may  be 
flung  back  into  an  indeterminate  condition.  But  to 
the  real  solution  of  such  problems  it  would  be  difficult 
to  show  that  religion  contributes  any  new  elements, 
so  as  to  twine  that  into  duty  that  was  not  duty  before." 

"  Is  not  that  'a.petitio  principii  ?  "  respectfully  inquired 
the  Dean.  "The  question  to  be  proved  is.  What  is 
the  basis  of  morality  ?  If  religion,  then  with  the  decay 
of  religion  the  duties  it  supports  would  decay.  If 
wrongs  are  mala  in  se,  why  are  they  so  ?  The  nature  of 
things,  Mr.  Spencer  has  said  in  his  '  Data  of  Ethics.^ 
But  whence  the  nature  of  things  ?  How  are  we  to 
know  it  ?  Is  it  the  will  of  God  revealed  to  us  in  the 
Bible,  or  in  our  moral  sense,  or  in  experience,  or 
by  all  these  ?     Is  its  origin  natural  or  supernatural  ?  " 

"  The  moral  sense,  adjudicating  and  proclaiming 
moral  rules,"  remarked  Professor  Clifford,  "  is  the  ac- 
cumulated instinct  of  the  race,  poured  into  and  over- 
flowing us  as  if  the  ocean  were  poured  into  a  cup. 
The  spring  of  virtuous  action  is  the  social  instinct, 
which  is  set  to  work  by  the  practice  of  comradeship. 
Virtue  is  a  habit,  not  a  sentiment  or  an  ism.  I 
neither  admit  the  moral  influence  of  theism  in  the 
past  nor  look  forward  to  the  moral  influence  of  hu- 
manism in  the  future," 

"What  is  your  opinion.  Professor  Robertson  ?"  in- 
quired the  host. 


60  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

"As  to  morality,  you  seem  to  hold  to  Mr.  Locke's 
tabula  rasa  theory,"  was  the  response  ;  "  but  is  there 
not  an  element  or  factor  in  the  individual's  knowledge 
that  is  there  before,  or,  at  all  events,  apart  from  that 
which  happens  to  come  to  him  by  way  of  ordinary 
experience  ?  This  other  element  or  factor  is  now  most 
commonly  represented  as  an  inheritance  that  each 
human  being  brings  into  life  with  him.  We  are  to 
understand  that  a  human  child  being  what  he  is — the 
offspring  of  particular  parents,  of  a  particular  nation, 
of  a  particular  race,  born  at  a  particular  stage  in  the 
race's  development — does  know  and  feel  and  will 
otherwise  than  he  would  if  all  or  any  of  these  circum- 
stances were  different.  I  cannot  doubt  that  human 
beings  are  determined  by  inherited  constitutions, 
mental  or  nervous,  or  mental  and  nervous,  to  inter- 
pret and  order  their  incidental  experience  in  a  certain 
common  fashion  ;  in  other  words,  that  the  way  of 
men's  knowing  is  prescribed  for  them  by  ancestral 
conditions.  Original  endowment  is  everything,  and 
man's  life-experience  little  or  nothing,  toward  the  sum 
of  his  knowledge.  The  latest  phase  of  modern  phil- 
osophic thought,  then,  becomes  hardly  distinguishable 
from  the  high  speculative  doctrine  of  Leibitz — that  in 
knowledge  there  is,  properly  speaking,  no  acquisition 
at  all,  but  every  mind  (or  monad)  simply  develops 
into  activity  all  the  potency  within  it  :  not  really  af- 
fected by  or  affecting  any  other  mind  or  thing.  It 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  tendency  of  recent 
evolutionism  in  psychology  is  to  reduce  to  a  mini- 
mum, or  even  crush  out,  the  influence  of  incidental 
experience  as  a  factor  in  the  development  of  the 
individual  knowledge.  What  can  happen  to  the  in- 
dividual in  his  little  life  seems  to   be  so  mere  a  trifle 


LORD    SELBORNE.  61 

by  the  side  of  all  that  has  happened /<?r  him  through 
the  ages.  The  race  is  a  solidarity  from  which  the  in- 
dividual man  is  never  separable.  Humanity  is  an  or- 
ganism, and  heredity  continues  the  past  into  the  pres- 
ent and  future."* 

•'Heredity  recognizes  individuality,"  said  the 
Dean,  "  but  this  organic  humanism  of  which  you 
speak  never  emancipates  the  individual,  any  more 
than  the  tree  emancipates  the  limb.  Humanity  be- 
comes one  ever-growing  personality,  with  an  ever-ac- 
cumulating experience  and  intelligence,  with  an  ever- 
continuous  history,  each  identical  with  the  whole,  and 
the  whole  as  incomplete  without  each  as  the  arch 
without  each  voussoir.  Thus,  evolution  compels 
humanity  ever  to  be  more  humanity,  and  immortal 
humanity.  But  in  dropping  individuality,  you  drop 
responsibility,  and  so  all  morality.  But  Paul  said  to 
the  Romans, f  '  Every  one  of  us  shall  give  account  of 
himself  to  God.'  So  that  the  question  of  moral  ac- 
countability brings  us  again  face  to  face  with 
theology." 

"  False  theology,"  remarked  Sir  James  Stephen, 
''cannot  give  a  good  morality." 

"That  is  an  admission,"  replied  the  Dean,  "that 
theology  affects  morality,  and  a  true  theology  would 
affect  morality." 

"I  do  not  see  how  that  can  be  denied,"  interrupted 
Lord  Selborne.  "  Morality  has  not  flourished  among 
either  civilized  or  uncivilized  men  when  religious 
belief  has  been  generally  lost  or  utterly  debased. 
Nothing  worse  can  be  conceived  than  the  morality  of 

*  See  Prof.  Croom  Robertson's  essay,  How  We  Come  by  Our 
Knowledge.  C,  May,  1873.     The  Nineteenth  Century. 
f(Ch.  xiv.  12.) 


62  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

the  Greeks  and  Romans  at  the  height  of  their  civiliza- 
tion, when  religion  was  dead." 

"  To  assert,"  remarked  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  with 
due  deference  to  the  opinion  just  expressed,  "  that 
there  is  no  morality  but  what  is  based  on  theology,  is 
to  assert  what  experience,  history  and  philosophy 
flatly  contradict.  History  teaches  us  that  some  of  the 
best  types  of  morality,  in  men  and  in  races,  have  been 
found  apart  from  anything  that  Christians  can  call 
theology  at  all.  Morality  has  been  advancing  for 
centuries  in  modern  Europe,  while  theology,  at  least 
in  authority,  has  been  visibly  declining," 

"  This  would  seem  to  show,"  said  Lord  Selborne, 
''  the  morality  that  advanced  with  the  impetus  given 
to  it  by  religion  must  recede  when  religion  declines 
and  that  impetus  is  no  longer  felt.  It  was  so  in  Rome. 
The  morality  of  the  Romans  in  the  old  republican 
times  when  they  knew  nothing  of  Greek  philosophy 
was  praised  by  Polybius,  who  connected  it  directly 
and  emphatically  with  the  influence  among  them  of 
religious  belief.  After  their  intellectual  cultivation 
had  taken  its  tone  from  the  irreligious  or  agnostic 
materialism  of  Epicurus,  then  morality  became  what 
is  described  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  and  in  the  satires  of  Juvenal." 

"  But  the  morality  of  Confucius  and  of  Sakya 
Mouni,"  responded  Mr.  Harrison,  "  of  Socrates  and 
Marcus  Aurelius,  of  Turgot,  Condorcet  and  Hume, 
was  entirely  independent  of  theology.  The  moral 
system  of  Aristotle  was  framed  without  any  view  to 
theology,  as  completely  as  that  of  Comte  or  of  our 
recent  moralists." 

Mr.  Froude  interposed,  "  The  difliculty  of  conduct 
does  not  lie  in  knowing  what  it  is  right  to   do,  but  in 


MR.    FROUDE.  63 

doing  it  when  known.  Intellectual  culture  does  not 
touch  the  conscience.  It  provides  no  motives  to  over- 
come the  weakness  of  the  will,  and  with  wider  knowl- 
edge it  brings  also  new  temptations.  The  sense  of 
duty  is  present  in  each  detail  of  life  ;  the  obligatory 
'  must '  which  binds  the  will  to  the  course  which 
right  principle  has  marked  out  for  it  produces  a  fibre 
like  the  fibre  of  the  oak.  The  educated  Greeks  knew 
little  of  it.  They  had  courage  and  genius  and  enthu- 
siasm, but  they  had  no  horror  of  immorality  as  such. 
The  Stoics  saw  what  was  wanting,  and  tried  to  supply 
it;  but  though  they  could  provide  a  theory  of  action, 
they  could  not  make  the  theory  into  a  reality."  * 

''  It  is  not  moral  knowledge  man  so  much  needs  as 
he  needs  moral  power,"  remarked  the  Dean. 

"How  far,"  inquired  the  Dean,  "is  one  age  in- 
dependent of  preceding  ages?  Faith  is  older  than 
philosophy.  The  religions  of  the  world  have 
pioneered  the  way  for  moral  systems." 

"  I  cannot  admit  that,"  said  Mr.  Frothingham,f 
"  morals,  in  the  order  of  time  and  the  order  of 
thought,  preceded  religion.  Religion  reflected  the 
moral  sentiment  of  man,  whatever  that  might  happen 
to  be,  and  changed  as  the  moral  sentiment  improved, 
or  the  reverse.  As  the  standard  of  morality  has  in- 
cessantly improved  as  the  principles  of  morality 
gradually  became  understood  and  established,  re- 
ligion took  on  new  forms  and  assumed  a  more  beauti- 
ful expression." 

"  And  yet,"  said  the  Dean,  "  excuse  me  for  quot- 
ing your  own  word,  so  well  expressed  when  you  say,;^ 

*  Froude's  Caesar,  p.  12. 

f  Visions  of  the  Future,   p.  78. 


64  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

'  There  was  a  time  when  religion  had  society  all  to 
itself  ;  because  feelings,  hopes,  fears,  anticipations, 
come  first.  Long  before  men  think,  study,  ■  reason, 
compare,  adjust  their  ideas,  understand  themselves^ 
they  feel  intensely.  Their  dread  of  supernatural 
power  is  fearful  ;  their  hope  of  blessedness  to  come 
to  them  from  a  source  outside  of  their  lives  takes  up 
all  the  feelings  that  their  hearts  can  entertain.  Thus, 
religion  gets  established,  organized,  recognized,  long 
before  morals  can  come  into  the  field.  Hence  we  see 
how  it  is  that  religion  dictates  morality.'  I  admit  that 
you  also  said  that,  '  Although  in  the  first  instance  it 
may  have  reflected  the  moral  condition  such  as  it 
was,  yet,  having  possession  of  the  ground,  it  dictates 
what  the  moral  principles  and  feelings  of  men  shall  be, 
and  so  prevents  them  from  becoming  what  they  would 
naturally  be.'  I  quote  this,"  continued  the  preacher, 
''to  show  how  thoroughly  religion  inspires,  molds 
and  originates  moral  feeling  and  action." 

''  The  influence  of  religion  upon  the  present 
morality  of  the  world,"  said  Mr.  Frothingham,  "  can- 
not be  overstated.  Imagine  religion  instituted,  and 
by  religion  instituted  I  mean  accepted,  recognized, 
built  with  form,  organized,  administered  by  priest. 
Imagine  this  thing  going  on  for  thousands  of  years,  as 
Christianity,  for  instance,  has  done,  so  as  to  become 
a  religion,  an  accepted  practical  system,  with  its 
priesthood,  its  churches,  its  altars,  its  sacraments,  its 
creeds,  its  sacred  books,  its  holy  customs,  covering 
the  surface  of  Europe.  For  ages  it  has  presided  over 
the  whole  of  life.  Generations  have  been  born  into 
it,  have  been  reared  by  it.  It  has  held  control  of  the 
great  universities,  the  centres  of  light  in  Italy,  France,, 
England,  Germany.     It  has   presided  over   the  acad- 


DR.    FROTHINGHAM. 


65 


emies    of   higher   education.     It  has  had    its  minis- 
ters in  the  bosom  of  every  family.     It  has   controlled 
the  nursery,  the  primary  school.     It  has  written  the 
school    book.     Wherever    young   people    met   for  m- 
struction,  religion  has  been  on  the  spot  to   say   what 
the  instruction   should  be.     This  is  what  I  meant  by 
instituted  religion.     It  is  religion  made  a  part  of  ex- 
istence.    Nobody  questions  it.    Nobody  disregards  it. 
So  completely  a  matter  of  course   is  it  that  nobody 
asks  a  reason  for   its  existence,  or  credentials  for  its 
authority.     Nobody  doubts  its  doctrines,  disputes  the 
efficacy   of  its   sacraments,  neglects   its  observances. 
Generation    after    generation    is    born,    matured  and 
buried  without  raising  a  surmise  in  regard  to  its  abso- 
lute right  to  rule.     Such   is  instituted  religion.     It  is 
not  your  creed  or  my  creed,  or  the  creed  of  any  com- 
pany, clique  or  set— it  is  the  creed  of  everybody,  man, 
woman  and  child. 

'^For  a  thousand  years  Roman  Catholicism  was 
thus  the  faith  of  the  Western  world,  as  the  Greek 
Church  was  the  faith  of  the  Eastern  world,  husband- 
ing the  sacred  sentiments  of. the  people.  All  the 
great  philosophers  were  Romanists.  The  scientific 
men  were  believers  in  the  Church.  Everybody,  high 
and  low,  strong  and  weak,  rich  and  poor,  wise  and 
foolish— everybody  without  exception,  without  hesita- 
tion, without  compulsion,  recognized  the  binding 
authority  of  religion  over  the  whole  of  life. 

"  Of  course,  a  system  of  morals  followed  more  com- 
plete, more  exact,  more  rigid,  than  had  been  known 
before.  I  say  '  of  course.'  The  object  of  religion 
has,  we  must  bear  in  mind,  been  to  make  people 
happy  hereafter.  How  was  it  to  do  this  ?  In  order 
to    guarantee  happiness  hereafter,   it   was    necessary 


66  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

that  people  who  professed  the  religion  should  be 
members  of  the  Church,  should  be  constant  at  the 
sacraments,  should  avail  themselves  of  the  ministra- 
tions of  the  priest  ;  for  saving  power  came  from 
above,  from  outside,  from  supernatural  sources. 
Hence,  certain  moral  precepts  must  be  accepted,  cer- 
tain books  must  be  read,  certain  books  must  be 
avoided,  a  certain  routine  of  conduct  must  be  gone 
over.  Religion,  therefore,  had  its  prescribed  formu- 
laries for  every  act  and  experience  of  life.  The  min- 
isters of  religion  were  in  every  house,  telling  the  par- 
ent how  to  rear  the  child,  telling  the  teacher  what  the 
child  should  study,  telling  the  thinker  what  to  think, 
the  student  what  to  learn,  the  critic  what  to  blame  or 
praise. 

"  We  see  the  system  working.its  way  in  until  it  occu- 
pies every  field  of  human  life — the  departments  of 
sentiment,  emotion,  conscience;  regulating  the  emo- 
tions of  hope  and  fear;  standing  guard  at  all  the  ave- 
nues of  the  intellectual,  sentimental  and  moral  world. 
Here  is  a  system  of  m.orals."  * 

"I  think  it  evident,"  said  Sir  James  Stephen,  "  that 
the  destruction  of  religion  would  involve  a  moral  rev- 
olution ;  but  it  would  no  more  destroy  morality 
than  a  political  revolution  destroys  law.  It  would 
substitute  one  set  of  moral  rules  and  sentiments  for 
another,  just  as  the  establishment  of  Christianity  and 
Mohammedanism  did  when  they  superseded  various 
forms  of  Paganism." 

"  But  such  a  revolution,"  remarked  the  Dean, 
"  is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  contemplate.  It  would  give 
us 

*  Frothingham:  Visions  of  the  Future,  pp.  S-12. 


MR.   MILL.  67 

"  (b)  The  Morality  of  what  Comte  calls  a  Religion 
without  a  God.'" 

Mr.  Mill  said  :  "  Comte  called  this  the  Religion 
of  Humanity.  So  far  as  it  is  a  religion,  is  it  to 
die  with  all  other  religions?  As  it  looks  to  a 
morality  without  religion,  it  is,  as  to  conduct, 
practical  Atheism.*  If  this  could  be  called  a 
religion  at  all,  the  question  is  not  whether  it  will 
end,  but  can  it  ever  begin  ?  Can  a  right  con- 
duct ever  begin  without  a  right  power  ?  and  the 
power  of  action  is  not  logic,  but  feeling.  Power  is 
derived,  not  inherent.  Matter  acquires  gravitation 
directly  as  to  mass  and  inversely  as  to  distance. 
Mora]  ends  are  reached  by  acquired  power,  operating 
on  our  natural  faculties,  involution  energizing  evolu- 
tion. Positivism,  ignoring  the  courses  of  things  and 
their  destiny,  and,  of  course,  the  being  of  God, 
simply  studies  the  laws  of  the  universe.  But  what  is 
the  cause  or  who  is  the  giver  of  law  ?  This  question 
Positivism  does  not  discuss.  Its  rules  of  moral  con- 
duct are  sought  in  the  light  of  experience  only,  and  not 
in  the  will  of  any  Supreme  Being." 

"  The  word  LaivT  said  Professor  Blackie,f  "  is  the 
last  term  with  those  who  disdain  to  use  the  name  of 
God  as  the  underlying  reasonable  cause  of  the  grand 
order  of  the  Universe.  But  this  word,  however  fash- 
ionable, is  utterly  void  of  philosophical  significance. 
A  law  is  simply  a  regular  method  of  operation,  and 
implies  either  an  internal  or  external  causal  Force, 
whose  constant  and  consistent  action  produces  that 
method  of  operation.  The  motion  of  a  piston  in  a 
steam-engine  proceeds  according  to  a  law  ;  but  no  sane 

*  Mill's  Comte,  pp.  121-133. 
f  Nat.  Hist.  Atheism,  p.  244. 


68  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

man  could  dream  of  substituting  that  expression  of 
regularity  in  the  movement  for  the  true  cause  of  the 
movement.  The  cause  of  the  law  in  this  case  is  the  nat- 
ure of  steam  and  the  designing  mind  of  James  Watt. 
So  with  everything  else  :  the  men  on  a  chess-board,  the 
balls  on  a  billiard-table,  the  soldiers  in  an  ordered 
battle,  move  according  to  a  law  ;  but  to  substitute  that 
law  for  the  cause  of  these  motions  would  not  be 
claimed.  The  cause  of  the  motion  is  a  motive  force  ; 
and  the  cause  of  all  reasonable  motion,  or  motion  ac- 
cording to  law,  is  a  reasonable  motive  force.  And 
in  this  way  the  cause  of  the  laws  of  Nature,  which 
we  are  called  upon  to  substitute  for  God,  is  the  Su- 
preme designing  Reason  or  reasonable  Force  which 
we  call  God.  The  self-existent  divine  reason  con- 
trolling the  physical  world  we  call  the  laws  of  Nat- 
ure, and  the  same  Reason  controlling  the  moral  world 
we  call  the  principles  of  right  conduct.  Fundament- 
ally, both  are  one:  deny  the  radical  unity  of  the  laws 
of  Nature  in  the  Divine  Being  and  you  can  have  no 
reason  to  admit  a  controlling  unity  of  reasonable  plan 
in  a  well-ordered  life  or  a  well-governed  state."  * 

"  It  is  the  aim  of  Positivism,"  said  one  of  the  party, 
*'  and  of  the  moral  education  which  it  designs,  to 
bring  the  doctrine  of  the  social  organism,  and  of 
the  organic  relations  of  human  beings,  more  and 
more  vividly  into  the  consciousness  of  mankind. 
Well  aware  of  the  feebleness  of  the  sympathetic 
instincts,  it  attributes  to  their  lack  of  devel- 
opment or  to  their  systematic  perversion,  a  large 
part  of  the  miseries  and  inadequacies  and  dis- 
appointments which  at  present  darken  human  life. 
It  .proposes,  therefore,    to    develop    such    sentiments 

*  lb.  44. 


DR.    FROTHINGHAM.  69 

by  every  practicable  means.  It  addresses  those  who 
are  capable  of  speculation  with  the  true  philosophy 
of  the  doctrine,  and  confides  to  them  the  task 
of  continually  expounding  and  exploring  it ;  of  en- 
forcing it  by  exhortation  and  illustration,  by  prin- 
ciple and  precept.  Thus,  to  the  priests  of  Catholi- 
cism, Positivism  opposes  the  philosophers.  Over 
those  unable  to  really  understand  ideas,  it  extends  the 
influence  of  feelings,  emotions,  sentiments  generated 
by  ideas."* 

"Remembering  this,"  interposed  Dr.  F.,  "re- 
ligion, in  all  ages,  has  preached  compassion,  sympathy, 
fellow-feeling,  piety,  tenderness.  It  has  told  the 
great  that  they  were  great  in  order  that  they  might 
help  the  small.  It  has  bidden  the  rich  to  bear  in  mind 
their  stewardship,  to  remember  that  they  were  rich 
in  order  to  bless  the  poor.  It  has  urged  on  the  wise 
the  lesson  of  service  to  the  simple,  reminding  them 
that  as  the  poor  and  toiling  labor  that  they  may 
have  bread,  they  should  in  return  give  light,  life  and 
immortality,  f 

"  And  yet  the  spheres  of  morality  and  religion  are 
quite  distinct,"  continued  Dr.  Frothingham.  "Moral- 
ity aims  to  produce  a  perfect  society  ;  religion  aims 
at  building  up  the  family  in  heaven.  Morality  aims 
at  making  men  happy,  sympathetic,  just,  kind  ;  re- 
ligion aims  at  makmg  men  safe  in  the  hereafter. 
The  object  of  religion—  taking  the  interpretation  of 
it  by  Christianity,  Bhuddism,  Brahmanism,  or  any  of 
the  old-world  faiths,  is  to  reconcile  men  with  God, 
not  with  each  other."  \ 

*  The  Value  of  Life,  a  reply  to  Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  p.  206. 
f  Frothingham  :  Visions  of  the  Future,  p.  156. 
I  Frothingham :  Visions  of  the  Future,  p.  54. 
[6] 


70  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

The  Dean  replied,  *'The  Master  said,  'Ye  have 
heard  that  it  was  said  by  them  of  old  time,  Thou 
shalt  not  kill,  and  whosoever  shall  kill  shall  be  in 
danger  of  the  judgment,  But  I  say  unto  you,  that 
whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother  without  a  cause, 
shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment  ;  and  whosoever 
shall  say  to  his  brother,  Raca,  shall  be  in  danger  of 
the  council  ;  but  whosoever  shall  say  thou  fool,  shall  be 
in  danger  of  hell  fire.  Therefore,  if  thou  bring  thy 
gift  to  the  altar,  and  there  rememberest  that  thy 
brother  hath  aught  against  thee,  leave  there  thy 
gift  before  the  altar,  and  go  thy  way  :  first  be  rec- 
onciled to  thy  brother,  and  then  come  and  offer 
thy  gift.'  *  In  brief,  my  dear  Dr.  Frothingham,  does 
morality  teach  a  single  rule  of  conduct  that  it  did 
not  get,  either  in  principle  or  form,  from  religion  ? " 

"That,"  interposed  Rev.  Dr.  Martineau,  "  is  only  an 
inverse  method  of  saying  that  Christian  ethics  are 
true  to  human  life  and  the  expression  of  right  reason.f 
I  admit  that  though  the  decay  of  religion  may 
leave  the  institutes  of  morality  intact,  it  draws  off 
their  inward  power.  The  devout  faith  of  men  ex- 
presses and  measures  the  intensity  of  their  moral  nat- 
ure, and  it  cannot  be  lost  without  a  remission  of  en- 
thusiasm, and  under  this  low  pressure,  the  successful 
re-entrance  of  importunate  desires  and  clamorous 
passions  which  had  been  driven  back.  To  believe  in 
an  ever-living  and  perfect  Mind,  supreme  over  the 
universe,  is  to  invest  moral  distinctions  with  immen- 
sity and  eternity,  and  lift  them  from  the  provincial 
stage  of  human  society  to  the  imperishable  theatre  of 
all  being.     When  planted  thus  in  the  very  substance 

*  Matthew  x.  21-24. 

f  April  number  Nineteenth  Century,  1S77. 


DR.   MARTINEAU.  71 

of  things,  they  justify  and  support  the  ideal  estimate 
of  the  conscience  ;  they  deepen  every  guilty  shame  ; 
they  guarantee  every  righteous  hope  ;  and  they  help 
the  will  with  a  divine  casting  vote  in  every  balance  of 
temptation.  The  sanctity  thus  given  to  the  claims  of 
duty,  and  the  interest  that  gathers  around  the  play 
of  character,  appear  to  me  more  important  elements 
in  the  power  of  religion  than  its  direct  sanctions  of 
hope  and  fear.  Yet  to  these,  also,  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  deny  great  weight,  not  only  as  extending  the  range 
of  personal  interests,  but  as  the  answer  of  reality  to  the 
retributor's  verdict  of  the  moral  sense.  Cancel  these 
beliefs,  and  morality  will  be  left  reasonable,  but  para- 
lyzed ;  possible  to  temperaments  comparatively  pas- 
sionless, but  with  no  grasp  on  vehement  and  poetic 
natures ;  and  gravitating  toward  the  simply  pruden- 
tial wherever  it  maintains  its  ground.  Historical  ex- 
perience appears  to  confirm  this  estimate.  In  no  race 
(notwithstanding  conspicuous  individual  exceptions) 
have  the  excesses  of  sensual  passion  been  so  kept  in 
check  as  among  the  Jews.  There  is  no  more  striking 
feature  in  their  literature  during  the  moral  declension  of 
Greek  and  Roman  society  (e.  g.,  in  the  Sibyline  Oracle) 
than  the  horror  which  it  expresses  of  the  pervading 
dissoluteness  of  the  Pagan  world.  It  certainly  can- 
not be  said  that  the  problem  was  rendered  easy  by 
the-; .coolness  of  the  Jewish  temperament.  The  phe- 
nomena of  Christendom  presents  a  more  complicated 
tissue.  But  a  just  analysis  yields,  I  believe,  the  same 
result,  and  attests  the  force  of  religious  conviction 
as  the  only  successful  antagonist,  on  any  large  scale, 
of  the  animal  impulses.  True  it  is,  that  in  the  very 
presence  of  the  Church,  and  even  among  its  represen- 
tatives, gross  vices    have   ^at    times    prevailed.     But 


72  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

these  have  been  hollow  times,  in  which,  w4th  large 
classes  of  persons,  the  outer  shell  of  religion  shel- 
tered insincere  life,  and  the  private  habits  be- 
trayed the  inward  disintegration  which  policy  or  in- 
difference concealed."  * 

"Are  we  to  understand,"  inquired  the  host,  "that 
civilization  may  go  down  in  the  very  presence  of  re- 
ligion ? " 

"  Not  in  its  presence,  but  in  its  absence.  To  test 
the  power  of  religion,"  continued  Rev.  Dr.  M,  "we 
must  limit  ourselves  to  cases  where  that  power  is 
not  effete.  In  the  Puritan  families  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  among  the  present  Catholic  peasantry  of  Ire- 
land, throughout  the  Society  of  Friends^  and  in  the 
Wesleyan  classes,  it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the 
control  of  irregular  desires  has  been  attained  with  an 
exceptional  ease  and  completeness." 

"Man  wants,"  said  Mr.  Harrison,  "a  morality  dis- 
coverable alone  by  observation  and  experience,  unin- 
fluenced by  faith  in  the  supernatural." 

"  Christians,"  replied  the  Dean,  "  teach  a  moral- 
ity with  both  sanctions.  Their  revealed  morality  is 
practical,  and  their  practical  morality  is  revealed. 
Where  the  mere  moralist  has  much,  the  Christian 
moralist  has  more.  His  religion  is  moral,  and  his 
morality  is  religion.  But  the  effort  to  divorce  moral- 
ity from  religion  is  nothing  new.  In  every  age  and 
community  there  are  moral  individuals  who  ignore  re- 
ligion while  they  are  instructed  by  it.  The  rational- 
istic skeptic  forgets  that  he  was  once  a  believing 
child.  The  teachings  of  a  religious  mother  live  on  in 
the  unbelieving  man.     The  great  religious   pressure 

of  the  world  without  controls  the  life  that  thinks  itself 
___  _ 


DR     FROTHINGHAM.  73 

governed  exclusively  by  its  own  force  of  reason  from 
within.  Morality  apart  from  religion  has  ever  disas- 
trously failed.  But  two  instances  are  remembered 
where  the  separation  was  complete.  In  the  one,  at  the 
fall  of  the  Roman  Republic,  religion  being  entirely 
exhausted,  expired,  and  Caesar  came  ;  in  the  other,  as 
at  the  rise  of  the  French  Republic,  religion  was  only 
excluded  to  be  restored  by  Napoleon.  In  either  case, 
the  moral  chaos  was  horrible.  Thus,  morality  is  ever 
the  child  of  religion." 

"Much  of  this  is  certainly  true,"  said  Dr.  Frothing- 
ham.  ''  Consider  the  practical  effect  of  the  great  doc- 
trine of  all  instituted  religion,  upon  the  moral  dispo- 
sition of  men  ;  for  instance,  the  doctrine  of  a  pei'sonal 
God.  And  by  a  personal  God  I  do  not  mean  an  infi- 
nite intelligence,  will,  force,  '  a  stream  of  tendency,' 
a  '  Power  outside  of  ourselves  working  for  righteous- 
ness.' I  mean  an  individual  being  watching  over  the 
world,  in  whole  and  in  part,  overlooking  and  ordering 
every  individual  life,  appointing  each  particular  lot, 
adjusting  every  detail  of  fortune,  counting  the  tears, 
numbering  the  disappointments  of  every  one,  balanc- 
ing evil  against  good,  harm  against  benefit,  joy  against 
sorrow,  educating  men,  training  them  with  patient 
providence  and  assigning  every  incident  in  a  varied 
experience  by  his  discerning  will  and  for  his  supreme 
purpose.  Think  of  such  an  idea  as  this  holding  pos- 
session of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  world,  say  for 
a  thousand  years,  nobody  doubting  it,  nobody  repel- 
ling it,  everybody,  old  and  young,  giving  to  it  an  im- 
plicit, explicit  and  familiar  faith,  growing  up  and 
working  themselves  into  it  ! 

'*  What  is,  what  must  be,  the  consequence  ?  Cer- 
tainly a  state  of   mind,  feeling,  will,  altogether  pecul- 


74  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

iar.  Suppose  that  each  one  of  us  firmly  and  abso- 
lutely believed,  without  the  least  misgiving  or  qualifi- 
cation, that  a  being  such  as  I  have  described,  infinitely 
wiser,  better,  more  far-seeing,  more  forecasting  than 
he,  had  the  charge  of  his  particular  destiny — some 
guardian  angel,  some  eternal  spirit,  accompanying 
him  in  every  point  of  his  career,  doing  everything 
that  happened  to  him,  undoing  everything  that  was 
in  the  nature  of  mishap  to  him,  sending  calamity, 
loss,  disaster,  bereavement:  if  he  were  stretched  upon 
the  bed  of  sickness,  stretching  him  there  with  definite 
intention;  if  he  were  raised  up,  raising  him  up  for  a 
purpose;  in  all  respects  administering  every  part  and 
particle  of  private  experience — think,  I  say,  of  the 
power  of  such  a  belief  as  that!  Believing  this,  one 
would  accept  his  faith  without  a  question,  without  a 
murmur.  Is  he  poor,  he  must  bless  his  poverty.  Is 
he  ignorant,  simple,  he  must  be  glad  that  he  is  not 
in  the  company  of  the  wise.  Is  he  cast  down,  trod- 
den under  the  foot  of  men,  persecuted,  oppressed, 
this  is  his  privilege.  It  is  a  sin  to  find  fault  that  this 
being  takes  the  pains  to  chasten,  to  educate,  to  dis- 
cipline, to  lead  him  on.  Blessed  be  poverty!  Blessed 
be  pain,  sickness,  suffering,  toil  !  Blessed  be  a  lonely 
and  miserable  lot !  Blessed  are  the  poor.  Blessed 
are  the  meek.  Blessed  are  the  hungry  and  thirsty. 
Blessed  are  they  that  are  persecuted.  Blessed  are  they 
of  whom  all  men  speak  ill,  for  whom  the  Lord  loveth 
he  chasteneth.  Through  suffering  men  are  made  per- 
fect. Submit  and  acquiesce.  Be  grateful  for  the 
cross  ;  bow  to  the  rod  ;  take  your  lot.  No  matter 
whether  it  seems  in  the  eyes  of  men  desirable  or  not, 
you  know  nothing  about  that.  How  can  you,  short- 
sighted, undertake  to  pronounce  upon  it  ?     Accept  it 


F.  HARRISON.  75 

as  the  appointment  of  a  being  perfectly  wise  and  just 
and  good.  If  life  is  rich,  be  grateful  that  it  is  so. 
But  be  careful  not  to  be  overweening  in  your  vanity 
or  puffed  up  in  your  self-esteem.  Do  not  think  too 
highly  of  yourself,  for  if  you  do  it  will  be  all  taken 
away.  Such  is  the  moral  inference  from  a  belief  like 
this.  The  ministers  of  religion  repress  murmurs  and 
skepticism.  The  Church  thunders  its  denunciation 
against  those  who  would  change  the  established  situa- 
tion, pervert  the  order  of  things.  A  type  of  moral 
sentiment  is  fostered  the  characteristic  of  which  is 
the  abnegation  of  self,  the  complete  resignation  of 
the  person  in  favor  of  the  Supreme  Will." 

"  Disputes  about  a  name  are  idle,"  interposed  Mr. 
Harrison.  "  If  we  can  be  debarred  the  use  of  the 
name  of  Religion,  no  one  can  disinherit  us  of  the 
thing.  We  mean  by  religion  a  scheme  which  shall 
explain  to  us  the  relations  of  the  faculties  of  the  hu- 
man soul  within,  of  man  to  his  fellow-man  beside  him, 
to  the  world  and  its  order  around  him  ;  next,  that 
which  brings  him  face  to  face  with  a  power  to  which 
he  must  bow,  with  a  Providence  which  he  must  love 
and  serve,  with  a  Being  which  he  must  adore — that 
which,  in  fine,  gives  a  doctrine  to  believe,  a  discipline 
to  live  by,  and  an  object  to  worship.  This  is  the  an- 
cient meaning  of  religion,  and  the  fact  of  religion  all 
over  the  world  in  every  age.  What  is  new  in  our 
scheme,  who  follow  the  teaching  of  Comte,  is  merely 
that  we  avoid  such  terms  as  Infinite,  Absolute,  Im- 
material, and  vague  negatives  altogether,  resolutely 
confining  ourselves  to  the  sphere  of  what  can  be 
shown  by  experience,  of  what  is  relative  and  not  ab- 
solute, and  wholly  and  frankly  human."* 

*  Symposium,  the  Nineteenth  Century,  April,  1879. 


76  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

"Whether  religion  will  die  or  not,"  said  the  Dean, 
"depends  altogether  upon  the  probability  of  the  cul- 
tivated mind  becoming  only  atheistic." 

"As  to  that,"  remarked  Mr.  Frothingham,  "we 
need  not  fear  ;  for  about  a  century  ago,  in  France 
and  elsewhere  in  Europe,  the  belief  in  God  seemed 
passing  away.  The  very  name  of  God  was  spoken  in 
derision,  as  a  word  that  was  no  longer  powerful  to 
conjure  by.  A  philosopher  declined  an  article  on 
God  for  his  encyclopaedia,  saying  the  question  of  God 
had  no  significance.  He  who  professed  belief  in 
God  was  blackballed  at  the  clubs.  A  distinguished 
philosopher — I  think  it  was  Hume — remarking  in  a 
philosophical  company  in  Paris  that  he  never  saw  an 
atheist,  and  did  not  believe  that  there  was  one^  a 
gentleman  replied,  '  Well,  you  may  have  that  pleasure 
now.  Every  man  here  is  an  atheist.'  In  fact,  for  a 
brief  period  the  belief  in  God  had  lost  its  hold  in  cul- 
tivated minds  ;  Materialism  had  the  argument.  But 
since  then  the  ancient  conviction  has  been  taking 
heart,  and  has  steadily  pushed  its  antagonist  to  the 
wall.  And  this  in  the  face  of  physical  science,  which 
has  in  these  latter  days  attained  prodigious  growth, 
and  has  been  sweeping  gods  and  demi-gods  out  of  the 
world  as  the  house-maid  sweeps  chips  and  cobwebs 
from  a  parlor.  Definitions  of  God  have  been  vanish- 
ing, idols  have  been  trembling,  symbols  have  been 
fading  away,  trinities  have  been  dissolving,  person- 
alities have  been  waning  and  losing  themselves  ip 
light  or  in  shadow  ;  but  the  Being  has  been  steadily 
coming  forward  from  the  background,  looming  up 
from  the  abysses,  and  occupying  the  vacant  spaces, 
flowing  into  dry  channels,  and  taking  possession  of 


DR.    FROTHINGHAM.  77 

every  inch  of  matter  and  mind.  The  mystery  of  it 
deepens,  but  the  conviction  of  it  deepens  also."* 

''  From  the  polytheistic  religion  of  the  worship  of 
ancestors,"  said  the  Dean,  ''with  morality,  and  the 
polytheistic  religion  of  the  worship  of  the  elements 
as  deities,  without  morality,  the  next  logical  step  is 
to  an  atheistical  religion  of  morality  without  worship. 
This  religion,  if  such  it  can  be  called,  is  either  per- 
sonal or  what  man  should  be  in  himself,  as  taught  by 
Socrates  :  or  impersonal,  as  in  the  Fatalism  taught 
by  Zeno,  or  the  humanistic  morality  of  law,  or  what 
each  man  should  be  to  all  others,  as  taught  in  the 
Positivism  of  Comte.  I  do  not  say  that  these  men 
were  atheists,  but  only  that  they  taught  a  morality  as 
divorced  from  theology." 

"  The  avowed  atheist,"  rejoined  Dr.  F.,  ''  for  there 
are  such,  finds  it  harder  to  put  his  creed  into  words 
and  to  adjust  it  to  the  human  mind  than  ever  Atha- 
nasius  did  to  define  his  doctrine  of  Trinity.  You  can- 
not push  him  into  a  corner  ;  you  cannot  make  him 
avow  his  unbelief  in  unqualified  terms  ;  you  cannot 
compel  him  to  back  out  of  the  region  of  confessed 
divinity.  He  retires  beyond  the  reach  of  definition, 
but  not  beyond  the  reach  of  thought.  Comte  says, 
'  The  principle  of  theology  is  to  explain  everything  by 
supernatural  wills.  That  principle  can  never  be  set 
aside  until  we  acknowledge  the  search  for  causes  to  be 
beyond  our  reach,  and  limit  ourselves  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  laws.  The  universal  religion  adopts  as  its 
fundamental  dogma  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  an 
order  which  admits  of  no  variation,  and  to  which  all 
events  of  every  kind   are  subject.     That  there  is  such 


*  Frothingham:   Religion  of  Humanity,  p. 


37- 


78  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

an  order  can  be  shown  as  a  fact,  but  it  cannot  be  ex- 
plained.' "  * 

"  No  one  will  dispute  the  statement  of  M.  Comte/' 
said  Dr.  Bushnell,  "as  to  the  laws  of  matter.  But 
what  is  law  ?  '  The  laws  of  nature  cannot  account  for 
their  own  origin.'  f  The  word  is  used  with  many 
varieties  of  meaning,  but  always,  and  in  all  its 
varieties,  having  one  element  that  is  constant,  viz., 
the  opinion  had  of  its  uniformity  ;  as  that,  in  exactly 
the  same  circumstances,  it  will  always  and  forever 
do,  bring  to  pass,  direct  or  command  precisely  the 
same  thing.  Without  this,  no  law,  so  called,  is 
regarded  as  law.  Observing  this  fundamental  fact, 
w^e  notice  the  distinction  between  natural  and  moral 
law.  Natural  law  is  the  law  by  which  any  being 
or  thing  is  made  to  act  invariably  thus  or  thus, 
in  virtue  of  terms  inherent  in  itself;  as  when  any 
body  of  matter  gravitates  by  reason  of  its  matter,  and 
according  to  the  quantity  of  its  matter.  Moral  law 
pertains  never  to  a  thing,  nor  to  any  substance  in  the 
choice  of  cause  and  effect,  but  only  to  a  free  intelli- 
gence, or  self-active  power.  Its  rule  is  authority,  not 
force.  It  commands,  but  does  not  actuate  or  deter- 
mine. It  speaks  to  assent  or  choice,  inviting  action, 
but  operating  nothing  apart  from  choice.  It  imposes 
obligation,  leaving  the  subject  to  obey  or  not,  clear 
of  any  enforcement,  save  that  of  conviction  before- 
hand and  penalty  afterward.  There  is  a  third  kind 
of  law,  viz.,  the  law  of  one's  end,  or  the  law  which 
one's  reason  imposes  in  the  way  of  obtaining  this  end. 
Thus,  if  a  man  undertake  to  be  honest,  having  that 
for  an  end,  then  it  will  be  seen  that  his  end  so  far  be- 

*  Frothingham:   Religion  of  Humanity,  p.  39. 
f  Mill's  Comte,  p.  15. 


DR.    BUSHNELL.  79 

comes  a  law  to  all  his  actions  ;  that  is  a  law  self-im- 
posed, one  which  his  reason  prescribes,  and  which,  in 
accepting  his  end,  he  freely  accepts.  So,  if  a  man's 
end  is  to  be  rich,  we  shall  see  that  his  end  is  a  law  to 
his  whole  life-plan.*  But  who  is  to  fix  the  end  of 
life-work  ?  If  there  be  no  future,  then  the  end  is  a 
present  one.  If  a  present  one  only,  is  it  self-fixed,  or 
fixed  by  others  ?  Is  every  man  exclusively  a  law  unto 
himself  ?  If  not,  is  society  ?  And  if  society,  what  is 
over  society  ?  If  nothing,  then  society  is  irresponsi- 
ble for  its  life.  But  we  see  that  it  is  responsible  ;  for 
it  fails  with  vice  and  succeeds  with  virtue,  so  far  as 
its  own  work  is  concerned.  If  it  is  destroyed,  it  is 
not  self-destroyed.  But  if  nothing  is  law  but  like  re- 
sults from  like  conditions,  then  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  law;  for  conditions  are  always  unlike  ;  and  from 
unlike  conditions  there  can  be  no  law. 

"  As  worship  without  conduct  expires,"  continued 
Dr.  Bushnell,  ''as  seen  in  the  ancient  religion,  so  the 
attempt  at  conduct  without  worship  will,  now  as  then, 
lead  to  social  and  political  revolution. 

"  Each  successive  skeptical  system  claims  to  have 
discovered,  and  be  inspired  by,  some  new  principle 
needed  to  reform  and  direct  the  moral  movements  of 
the  world  ;  is  there  a  single  valuable  truth  found  in 
any  one  of  these  schemes  opposed  to  Christianity 
which  Christianity  itself  does  not  include  in  a  form 
better  far  ?  The  authors  of  these  systems,  either 
ignorant  of  the  forms  of  Christianity,  and,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  borrowing  some  one  of  its  many  and 
divine  principles,  separate  it  from  its  place  in  Christ's 
great  system  of  truth,  and   present  it  as  of  exclusive 

*  Bushnell  on  Nature  and  Supernature,  p.  263. 


80  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

importance,  and  as  a  principle  new  with  skepticism, 
and  therefore  opposed  to  Christianity. 

"  The  adherents  of  this  religion  of  Humanity  are 
sometimes  practical  men,  monopolized  by  their  busi- 
ness, honest  from  commercial  principle  or  policy,  pru- 
dent in  speech  and  circumspect  in  action.  They  claim 
to  be  moral  rather  than  religious.  They  stake  their 
chances  for  eternity  upon  their  respectability  in  time. 
But  while  they  themselves  rely  upon  their  morality, 
many,  if  not  most,  of  them  would  prefer  that  their 
families  take  their  chances  upon  religion.  They  feel 
that  their  sons,  especially,  are  safer,  certainly  for  this 
world,  in  the  Church  than  out  of  it. 

"  But  there  is  another  class  of  mind,  bewildered  by 
speculation  as  to  efficient  and  final  causes  of  things, 
who  turn  from  a  faith  in  God  to  what  they  call  a 
knowledge  of  man,  and  rest  their  all  on  that.  They 
mainly  adhere  to  the  Positive  philosophy  originated 
by  Hume  but  emphasized  by  Comte.  It  is  called 
positive  because  it  rests  on  the  positive  discoveries  of 
science  and  negatives  the  speculations  of  all  other 
systems. 

"  In  the  positive  state  of  science,  the  human  mind, 
acknowledging  the  impossibility  of  obtaining  abso- 
lute knowledge,  abandons  the  search  after  the  origin 
and  destination  of  the  universe  and  the  knowledge  of 
the  secret  causes  of  phenomena.  All  in  this  scheme 
is  temporal  and  human,  and  nothing  divine  and  eter- 
nal. Instead  of  looking  for  humanity  to  aspire  god- 
ward,  it  is  silent  as  to  the  very  being  of  God,  and 
turns  its  worship  to  Humanity.  As  we  have  said,  its 
religion  is  called  the  Religion  of  Humanity.  But 
what  sort  of  religion  is  that  ? " 

''  The    order   of  the    sciences,"  said    the    host,  '*  as 


THE   RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY.  81 

Stated  to  us  by  these  Positivists,  builds  a  philosophy 
that  binds  the  Cosmos  into  one  intelligible  whole, 
lying  around  its  great  perceptive  centre,  Man.  Its 
religious  and  moral  base  is  this  organic  Humanity, 
whose  good,  welfare  and  glory  become  the  mainspring 
of  life  and  duty.  The  Religion  of  Humanity,  in  a 
word,  is  that  religion  which  counts  Man  as  the  centre 
of  the  world,  and  solves  all  relations  by  reference  to 
that  centre.  It  is,  therefore,  the  true  and  scientific, 
because  the  only  verifiable,  religion  of  the  human  race. 
Its  fundamental  maxim  is  '  to  know  the  true  in  order 
to  do  the  good.' 

"  It  is  indeed  horrible  to  think  of  entirely  breaking 
up  old  ideas,  customs,  laws,  feelings,  hopes  and  wor- 
ships in  order  utterly  to  recast  society  upon  new  and 
untried  theories  of  right  and  wrong.  Think  of  the 
human  race  without  worship  !  praiseless,  prayerless, 
altarless,  without  hope  and  ivithout  God  in  the  world!' 

"Let  the  consequences  be  what  they  may,"  said 
Mr.  Frothingham,  ''  if  we  are  to  have  a  religion  that 
helps  morality  instead  of  hindering  it,  we  must  have 
a  new  conception  of  religion — a  new  religion^  with  new 
creeds,  a  new  order  of  sentiments,  new  institutions — 
a  religion  that  is  fully  sympathetic  with  man." 

''What  more  sympathetic  with  man  than  the  Chris- 
tian religion  ?"  said  the  Dean.  "  God  so  loved  the 
world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son,  that  he 
who  believeth  on  Him  should  not  perish,  but  have 
everlasting  life." 

"That  is  it,"  replied  Mr.  Frothingham.  "  We  want 
a  religion  that  plants  itself  upon  the  conditions  of 
success  in  this  life,  that  bids  men  study  their  human 
relations — a  human  religion,  in  which  the  conception 
of  man  is  substituted  for  the  conception  of  God  ;  in 


/4^3^5 


83  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

which  duty,  responsibility,  obligation,  shall  consist 
not  in  the  performance  of  works  pleasing  to  an  invisi- 
ble being  outside  the  world,  but  in  the  sincere  effort  to 
secure  the  happiness,  comfort,  satisfaction,  elevation, 
enlightenment  of  human  beings  in  the  world  where 
duty  is  actually  to  be  done  ;  a  reliction  which  shall 
lay  the  foundations  of  piety  in  obedience  to  the  facul- 
ties of  human  nature  as  they  are  unfolded,  and  to 
social  relations  as  they  are  understood,  and  which 
for  new  light  resorts  not  to  prophet,  saint  or  priest, 
not  to  sacred  Scripture,  Old  Testament  or  New,  but  to 
the  revelations  that  come  in  the  form  of  practical 
knowledge,  through  careful  and  conscientious  study 
of  the  requirements  and  conveniences  of  existence  in 
this  year  of  the  world's  history.  The  religion  of 
humanity,  the  church  of  humanity,  this  is  what  we 
are  coming  to  ;  the  conservative  faith  based  on  ob- 
servance of  the  moral  law,  the  religion  of  intelligence.'* 

"Is  not  the  Christian  religion,"  inquired  the 
Dean,  ''  one  of  intelligence  ?  Has  it  not,  as  you 
said,  built  up  the  schools,  inspired  literature,  made 
the  laws  that  have  elevated  woman,  and  preached 
the  gospel  of  love  to  the  poor  ?  What  is  the  creed 
of  this  new  religion  of  humanity? " 

"Its  creed,"  replied  Mr.  Frothingham,  "is  not  yet 
written,  but  it  is  a-making.  Its  sentiments  are  scarcely 
more  than  indicated  and  suggested.  Its  duties  are 
slowly  defining  themselves.  Its  future  is  shadowy, 
but  how  immense,  how  glorious  in  vision,  as  it  rises 
veiled  before  the  eyes  of  those  who  think,  feel,  aspire. 
Give  us  a  rational  religion  to  meet  a  rational  moral- 
ity." * 

"And  after  all  the  creeds  and  deeds  of  the   past," 

*  Visions  of  the  Future,,  pp.  98—9. 


A.   COMTE.  83 

said  the  Dean,  "after  all  the  hymns  and  prayers, 
after  all  that  science  knows  and  conjectures,  have  we 
to  renounce  all  religious  beliefs,  revolutionize  all  the 
morality  which  they  have  inspired,  and  go  back  to 
the  infancy  of  civilization  and  start  afresh?  Has  all 
the  progress  of  the  past  brought  us  to  moral  chaos? 
By  the  light  of  this  religion  of  humanity  are  we  to 
see  in  the  past  nothing  but  universal  error?  If  so,  is 
it  worth  lifting  the  veil  ?  Upon  the  Nothingness  of 
the  past  we  can  build  only  nothingness  in  the  future. 
Can  Comte  and  his  agnostic  disciples  teach  the  world 
a  new  and  better  religion  of  Humanity  than  Christ 
and  his  Apostle  ?  " 

"The  phrase  'Religion  of  Humanity,'"  remarked 
Mr.  Frothingham,  "has,  unfortunately,  been  associ- 
ated with  the  name  and  philosophy  of  Auguste 
Comte,  who  does  not  deserve  credit  for  the  main 
ideas  it  stands  for.  If  the  name  was  of  his  invention 
the  thing  was  not.  His  leading  conceptions  of  the 
solidarity  of  mankind,  of  the  grand  man,  and  immor- 
tality of  the  race,  were  thrown  out  several  years  in 
advance  of  him.  Comte  elaborated  them,  but,  as  we 
believe,  corrupted  and  perverted  them  ;  for  his  elab- 
oration was  artificial,  consisting  much  less  in  a  de- 
velopment of  spiritual  capacities  than  in  a  mechanical 
arrangement  of  outward  apparatus.  It  was  with  him  a 
manufactured  system  done  with  malice-aforethought. 
He  found  no  soul  in  it,  and  put  no  soul  into  it.  His 
spasm  of  sentimentality  gratified  itself  by  construct- 
ing this  ambitious  Mausoleum  which  was  to  take  the 
place  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  but  it  was  chu7'ch 
against  chui'ch.  It  was  the  Roman  Church  without 
its  theology  ;  St.  Peter's  without  a  saint.  It  is  the 
mechanism  of  the  old  faith  without  the   soul  of  tha 


84  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

new.  The  despotic  character  of  mediaeval  religion 
was  retained  ;  the  distinction  between  the  priesthood 
and  the  laity  ;  the  distinction  between  the  various 
secular  orders  ;  the  subjection  of  woman  to  man  ;  in 
a  word,  Comte's  Church  of  Humanity  was  in  every 
respect  European.  But  this  is  not  the  time  to  give  a 
critical  account  of  Comte's  scientific  chimera.  I  have 
said  this  much  of  its  character  to  show  why  we  re- 
pudiate it,  as  we  do,  and  disavow  all  purpose  of 
recommending  a  system  which  seems  so  full  of  per- 
nicious elements,  and  wholly  at  variance  with  the  in- 
tellectual, social  and  spiritual  tendencies  of  the  age." 

"  I  cannot  admit,"  remarked  Mr.  Frederic  Harri- 
son, '^  that  I  fully  agree  with  Mr.  Frothingham  in  all 
that  he  has  said.  We  who  follow  the  teaching  of 
Comte,  humbly  look  forward  to  an  ultimate  solution 
of  all  the  moral  and  theological  difficulties  by  the  force 
of  one  common  principle.  I  admit  with  Sir  James 
Stephen,  that  morality  has  a  basis  of  its  own,  quite 
independent  of  theology,  yet  deeply  affected  by  it  and 
destroyed  by  it  if  the  theology  be  not  true.  I  admit 
also  with  Lord  Selborne  that  if  the  religious  founda- 
tions and  sanctions  of  morality  be  given  up,  human  life 
runs  the  risk  of  sinking  in  depravity,  since  morality 
without  religion  is  insufficient  for  general  civilization. 
I  agree  also  with  Mr.  Martineau  that  theology  cannot 
supply  a  base  for  morality  which  has  lost  its  own;  and  I 
agree  with  what  he  further  says,  that  morals,  though 
they  have  a  base  of  their  own,  and  are  second  to  noth- 
ing, are  not  adequate  to  direct  human  life  until 
they  are  transfused  into  that  sense  of  resignation, 
adoration  and  communion  with  an  overruling  Provi- 
dence which  is  the  mark  of  true  religion." 

''We  speak  of  Providence,"  said  Mr.  Frothingham. 


THE   DEAN.  85 

*'We  say  life  is  a  school;  experience  is  an  educator; 
existence  is  a  discipline.  Yes;  but  it  is  a  school  where 
lessons  are  taught  in  an  unknown  tongue,  where  the 
books  are  written  in  a  tongue  that  nobody  can  read, 
and  the  teachers  use  signs  instead  of  speech.  It  is  a 
gymnasium  -where  the  institution  does  not  seem  to 
understand  the  pupils,  and  the  pupils  do  not  under- 
stand the  implements.  If  we  could  only  be  sure  that 
a  superintending  power,  wisdom,  love,  looked  after 
the  individual  interest — the  individual  interest:  that  is 
the  thing;  not  the  interest  of  the  ages,  not  the  welfare 
of  man,  but  your  happiness  and  mine — then  we  could 
look  with  tranquil  eye  upon  the  world.  But  can  this 
be  proved  ?  '** 

"The  being  of  God  implies  providence,"  replied 
the  Dean.  "  Through  providence  we  feel  our  way 
back  to  being  ;  the  indications  of  care  point  to  the 
care-taker.  The  notion  of  providence  is  as  universal 
as  the  notion  of  Deity.  'AH  things  are  providence,' 
said  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  poets,  ancient  and  mod- 
ern, prose  writers,  too,  bear  witness  to  the  general, 
we  may  say,  the  instinctive  belief  in  a  great  care  over 
the  world  of  things  and  men.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  belief  is  ever  absent  from  the  human 
mind,  or  can  be  ever  eradicated. f  But  logic  and  ob- 
servation beat  the  personal  and  special  providence  off 
the  ground.  The  philosopher  gives  up  the  theory  of 
final  causes  as  inapplicable  to  a  system  regulated  by 
universal  and  impartial  laws."  \ 

"  But,"  asked  the  Dean,  "  when  you  use  such  awful 
words  as  Maw,'  and  'order,'  how  can  you  hesitate  to 

*  Visions  of  the  Future,  p.  io6. 

f  Frothingham:   Religion  of  Humanity,  p.  i8o. 

tib. 

m 


86  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

use  the  other  tremendous  words,  '  cause  '  and  '  God  ? ' 
What  is  law  but  steady,  continuous,  persistent,  con- 
sistent power  ;  cumulative,  urgent,  regulated  power  ; 
power  moving  along  even  tracks  and  pushing  to- 
ward distinct  aims  ;  power  with  a  past  behind  it, 
and  a  future  before  ;  power  that  is  harmonious,  ryth- 
mical, as  Comte  calls  it,  orderly  ?  Can  Comte  con- 
ceive of  such  power  as  unintelligent  ?  Can  he  con- 
ceive of  it  as  intelligent  and  purposeless  ?  Can  he 
conceive  of  it  as  purposeful  and  yet  as  uncausing  ? 
Does  not  the  very  word  '  force,'  as  science  uses  it, 
compel  the  association  with  mind  and  will  ?  And  can 
we  think  of  mind  and  will  without  thinking  with  the 
same  brain-throb  of  wisdom  and  goodness  ?  It  seems 
as  if  one  must  have  completely  suppressed  in  his 
memory  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind,  to  help 
being  dragged  by  such  overpowering  words  as  '  law,' 
'will'  and  'order'  upward  out  of  all  the  meshes  of 
materialism  towards  the  Infinite  and  Perfect  One.  It 
is  logical  precision  itself  that  lends  wings.  The  very 
stones  of  fact  become  ethereal,  and  float  us  upon  the 
eternal  sea."  * 

"So  far,"  said  Professor  Huxley,  ''as  the  laws  of 
conduct  are  determined  by  the  intellect,  I  apprehend 
that  they  belong  to  science,  and  to  that  part  of  science 
which  is  called  morality.  But  the  engagement  of  the 
affections  in  favor  of  that  particular  kind  of  conduct 
which  we  all  call  good,  seems  to  me  to  be  something 
beyond  mere  science.  And  I  cannot  but  think  that 
it,  together  with  the  awe  and  reverence,  which  have 
no  kinship  with  base  fear,  but  arise  whenever  one 
tries  to  pierce  below  the  surface  of  things,  whether 
they  be  material  or  spiritual,  constitutes  all  that  has 

*  Frothingham:   Religion  of  Humanity,  p.  40. 


PROF.  HUXLEY.  87 

any  unchangeable  reality  in  religion.  And  just  as  I 
think  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  confound  the  science, 
the  morality,  with  the  affection,  religion  ;  so  do  I  con- 
ceive it  to  be  a  most  lamentable  and  mischievous  error, 
that  the  science,  theology,  is  so  confounded  in  the 
minds  of  many — indeed,  I  might  say,  of  the  majority 
of  men. 

'  I  do  not  express  any  opinion  as  to  whether  the- 
ology is  a  true  science,  or  whether  it  does  not  come 
under  the  apostolic  definition  of  '  science  falsely  so 
called  ;  '  though  I  may  be  permitted  to  express  the 
belief  that  if  the  Apostle  to  whom  that  much  misap- 
plied phrase  is  due  could  make  the  acquaintance  of 
much  of  modern  theology,  he  would  not  hesitate  a 
moment  in  declaring  that  it  is  exactly  what  he  meant 
the  words  to  denote.  But  it  is  at  any  rate  conceiv- 
able, that  the  nature  of  the  Deity,  and  His  relations 
to  the  universe,  and  more  especially  to  mankind,  are 
capable  of  being  ascertained,  either  inductively  or  de- 
ductively, or  by  both  processes.  And,  if  they  have 
been  ascertained,  then  a  body  of  science  has  been 
formed  which  is  very  properly  called  theology.  Fur- 
ther, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  affection  for  the 
Being  thus  defined  and  described  by  theologic 
science  would  be  properly  termed  religion  ;  but  it 
would  not  be  the  whole  of  religion.  The  affection 
for  the  ethical  ideal  defined  by  moral  science  would 
claim  equal  if  not  superior  rights.  For  suppose  the- 
ology established  the  existence  of  an  evil  deity — and 
some  theologies,  even  Christian  ones,  have  come  very 
near  this — is  the  religious  affection  to  be  transferred 
from  the  ethical  idea  to  any  such  omnipotent  demon  ? 
Better  a  thousand  times  that  the  human  race  should 
perish    under    his  thunderbolts    than  it    should    say, 


88  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

^  Evil,  be  thou  my  good.'  There  is  nothing  new,  that 
I  know  of,  in  this  statement  of  the  relations  of  religion 
with  the  science  of  morality  on  the  one  hand  and  that 
of  theology  on  the  other.  But  I  believe  it  to  be  alto- 
gether true,  and  very  needful,  at  this  time,  to  be 
clearly  and  emphatically  recognized  as  such  by  those 
who  have  to  deal  with  the  education  question. 

''We  are  divided  into  two  parties — the  advocates  of 
so-called  'religious'  teaching  on  the  one  hand,  and 
those  of  so-called  '  secular '  teaching  on  the  other. 
And  both  parties  seem  to  me  to  be  not  only  hopelessly 
wrong,  but  in  such  a  position  that  if  either  succeeded 
completely,  it  would  discover,  before  many  years  were 
over,  that  it  had  made  a  great  mistake  and  done  seri- 
ous evil  to  the  cause  of  education.  For,  leaving  aside 
the  more  far-seeing  minority  on  each  side,  what  the 
'  religious  '  party  is  crying  for  is  mere  theology,  under 
the  name  of  religion  ;  while  the  '  secularists  '  have  un- 
wisely and  wrongfully  admitted  the  assumption  of 
their  opponents,  and  demand  the  abolition  of  all  '  re- 
ligious '  teaching,  when  they  want  to  be  free  of  theol- 
ogy— burning  your  ships  to  get  rid  of  the  cock- 
roaches !  But  my  belief  is,  that  no  human  beings 
ever  did,  or  ever  will,  come  to  much,  unless  their  con- 
duct was  governed  and  guided  by  the  love  of  some 
ethical  ideal.  Undoubtedly,  your  gutter  child  may 
be  converted  by  mere  intellectual  drill  into  the  '  sub- 
tlest of  all  the  beast  of  the  field  ; '  but  we  know  what 
has  become  of  the  original  of  that  description,  and 
there  is  no  need  to  increase  the  number  of  those  who 
imitate  him  successfully  without  being  aided  by  the 
rates.  And  if  I  were  compelled  to  choose  for  one  of 
my  own  children,  between  a  school  in  which  real  re- 
ligious  instruction  is    given,  and    one   without    it,    I 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  89 

should  prefer  the  former,  even  though  the  child 
might  have  to  take  a  good  deal  of  theology  with  it. 
Nine-tenths  of  a  dose  of  bark  is  mere  half-rotten 
wood  ;  but  one  swallows  it  for  the  sake  of  the  par- 
ticles of  quinine,  the  beneficial  effect  of  which  may  be 
weakened,  but  it  is  not  destroyed,  by  the  wooden  di- 
lution, unless  in  a  few  cases  of  exceptionally  tender 
stomachs.  Hence,  when  the  great  mass  of  the  Eng- 
lish people  declared  that  they  want  to  have  the  chil- 
dren in  the  elementary  schools  taught  the  Bible,  and 
when  it  is  plain  from  terms  of  the  Act,  the  debaters 
in  and  out  of  Parliament,  and  especially  the  emphatic 
declarations  of  the  Vice-President  of  the  Council, 
that  it  was  intended  that  such  Bible-reading  should 
be  permitted,  unless  good  cause  for  prohibiting  it 
could  be  shown,  I  do  not  see  what  reason  there  is  for 
opposing  their  wish.  Certainly,  I,  individually,  could 
with  no  shadow  of  consistency  oppose  the  teaching  of 
the  children  of  other  people  to  do  that  which  my  own 
children  are  taught  to  do.  And  even  if  the  reading 
of  the  Bible  were  not,  as  I  think  it  is,  consonant  with 
political  reason  and  justice,  and  with  the  desire  to  act 
in  the  spirit  of  the  education  measure,  I  am  disposed 
to  think  it  might  still  be  well  to  read  that  book  in  the 
elementary  schools."* 

Here  the  host  said,  "  perhaps,  gentlemen,  it  may  aid 
us  in  coming  to  some  conclusion  upon  this  important 
subject  by  getting  Herbert  Spencer's  views  upon  it." 

"^The  influence  of  intellectual  culture  upon  moi-ality,'^ 
Mr.  Spencer  said,  "  as  to  rational  legislation,  based  as 
it  can  only  be  on  a  true  theory  of  conduct,  which  is 
derivable  from  a  true  theory  of  mind,  must  recognize 
as  a  datum  the  direct  connection  of  action  with  feel- 

*  Huxley  *  Critiques  and  Addresses,  pp.  49,  50. 


90  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

ing.  ,.  .  It  is  never  the  knowledge  which  is  the 
moving  agent  in  conduct  ;  but  it  is  always  the  feeling 
which  goes  along  with  that  knowledge  or  is  excited 
by  it.  Though  the  drunkard  knows  that  after  to- 
day's debauch  will  come  to-morrow's  headache,  yet 
he  is  not  deterred  by  consciousness  of  this  truth,  un- 
less there  is  excited  in  him  an  adequate  amount  of 
feeling  antagonistic  to  his  desire  for  drink.  Similarly 
with  improvidence  in  general.  Much  of  our  legisla- 
tion must  be  fruitless  or  injurious.  We  are  at  pres- 
ent, legislature  and  nation  together,  eagerly  pushing 
forward  schemes  which  proceed  on  the  postulate  that 
conduct  is  determined  not  by  feelings,  but  by  cogni- 
tions. For  what  else  is  the  assumption  underlying 
this  anxious  urging-on  of  organizations  for  teaching? 
What  is  the  root-notion  common  to  Secularists  and 
Denominationalists,  but  the  notion  that  spread  of 
knowledge  is  the  one  thing  needful  for  bettering  be- 
havior? This  belief  in  the  moralizing  effects  of  intel- 
lectual culture,  flatly  contradicted  by  facts,  is  absurd 
ap7'ion.  What  imaginable  connection  is  there  be- 
tween the  learning  that  certain  clusters  of  marks  on 
paper  stand  for  certain  words,  and  the  getting  a 
higher  sense  of  duty  ?  What  possible  effect  can  ac- 
quirement of  facility  in  making  written  signs  of 
sounds,  have  in  strengthening  the  desire  to  do  right? 
How  does  a  knowledge  of  the  multiplication  table,  a 
quickness  in  adding  and  dividing,  so  increase  the 
sympathies  as  to  restrain  the  tendency  to  trespass 
against  fellow  creatures  ?  In  what  way  can  the  at- 
tainment of  accuracy  in  parsing  and  spelling  make 
the  sentiment  of  justice  more  powerful  than  it  was  ; 
or  why,  from  stores  of  geographical  information,  per- 
severingly  gained,  is  there  likely  to  come  increased 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  91 

regard  for  truth  ?  Not  by  precept,  though  heard 
daily  ;  not  by  example,  unless  it  be  followed  ;  but 
only  by  action,  often  caused  by  the  related  feeling 
can  a  moral  habit  be  formed.  And  yet  this  truth, 
which  mental  science  clearly  teaches,  and  which  is  in 
harmony  with  familiar  sayings,  is  a  truth  wholly  ig- 
nored in  current  educational  fanaticisms.  '  Good 
character  is  more  important  than  much  knowledge.' 
"  The  influe7ice  of  moral  teaching  is  supposed  by 
others  to  improve  conduct  and  diminish  crime.  They 
hold  general  knowledge  to  be  inadequate,  and  con- 
tend that  rules  of  right  conduct  must  be  taught.  Al- 
ready, however,  reasons  have  been  given  why  the  ex- 
pectations even  of  these  are  illusory;  proceeding  as 
they  do,  on  the  assumption  that  the  intellectual 
acceptance  of  moral  precepts  will  produce  conform- 
ity to  them.  I  will  not  dwell  on  the  contradictions 
to  this  assumption  furnished  by  the  Chinese,  to  all  of 
whom  the  high  ethical  maxims  of  Confucius  are 
taught,  and  who  yet  fail  to  show  us  a  conduct  propor- 
tionately exemplary.  It  will  suffice  if  I  limit  myself 
to  evidence  supplied  by  our  own  society,  past  and 
present,  which  negatives  very  decisively  these  san- 
guine expectations.  What  have  we  been  doing  all 
these  many  centuries  by  our  religious  agencies,  but 
preaching  right  principles  to  old  and  young  ?  Teach- 
ing by  clergymen  not  having  the  desired  effect,  and 
now  it  is  held  that  something  more  must  be  done — if, 
notwithstanding  perpetual  explanations  and  denunci- 
ation and  exhortations,  the  misconduct  is  so  great  that 
society  is  endangered  only  after  all  this  insistance  has 
failed,  is  it  expected  that  more  insistance  will  succeed — 
commands  and  interdicts  uttered  by  a  surpliced 
priest  to  minds   prepared   by  chant  and   organ-peal, 


92  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

not  having  been  obeyed  when  mechanically  repeated 
in  school-boy  sing-song  to  a  threadbare  usher,  amid 
the  buzz  of  lesson-learning  and  clatter  of  slates  ? 
Certainly  such  influences  as  may  be  gained  by  ad- 
dressing moral  truths  to  the  intellect,  is  made  greater 
if  the  accompaniments  arouse  an  appropriate  emo- 
tional excitement,  as  a  religious  service  does  ;  while, 
conversely,  there  can  be  no  more  effectual  way  of 
divesting  such  moral  truths  of  their  impressiveness, 
than  associating  them  with  the  prosaic  and  vulgariz- 
ing sounds  and  sights  and  smells  coming  from 
crowded  childreuv"  * 

''And  no  less  certain,"  said  Mr.  Ingersoll,  "  is  it  that 
precepts  often  heard  and  little  regarded,  lose  by  repe- 
tition the  small  influence  they  had." 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer:  "What  do  public  schools 
show  us?  Are  the  boys  rendered  merciful  to  one 
another  by  listening  to  religious  injunctions  every 
morning?  What  do  universities  show  us  ?  Have  per- 
petual chapels  habitually  made  under-graduates  be- 
have better  than  the  average  young  men  ?  What  do 
cathedral  towns  show  us  ?  Is  there  in  them  a  moral 
tone  above  that  of  other  towns  ?  Nowhere  do  we  find 
that  repetition  of  rules  of  right,  already  known  but 
disregarded,  produces  regard  for  them  ;  but  we  find 
that  contrariwise,  it  makes  the  regard  for  them  less 
than  before." 

"  It  is  evident,"  said  the  Dean,  ''  upon  the  whole, 
the  feeling  which  produces  action  is  more  likely  to 
arise  when  moral  truth  is  taught  surrounded  by  im- 
posing accessories  of  architecture,  painted  windows, 
tombs  and  dim  religious  light,  than  under  other  cir- 
cumstances not  calculated  to  excite  emotions*  While 
religious  services   in   schools   may  not   do   all   hoped 

*  Sociology,  p.  58. 


IMK,    MILL,  93 

from  them,  yet  the  scholars  would  be  worse  without 
those  services.  That  great  religious  influences  go  out 
from  such  universities  as  Oxford  and  Cambridge  is 
undeniable.  They  are  felt  upon  the  lives  and  char- 
acters of  the  graduates  in  all  after  years.  Look  at 
the  religious  literature — the  poems,  the  fictions,  the 
essays,  the  theistic  philosophies— that  go  from  them. 
They  feed  the  pulpit.  With  all  the  shortcomings  in- 
evitably incident  to  life  anywhere,  it  may  be  confi- 
dently asserted  that  religious  schools  do  more  good  as 
such  than  they  would  do  as  mere  secular  or  non- 
religious  schools.  It  is  certain  that  we  see  more  of 
this  feeling  leading  to  moral  action  in  connection 
with  religious  services — with  worship — than  we  find 
in  culture  without  religious  worship.  The  centre  and 
lines  of  religion  and  morality  coincide.  But  is  it 
necessary  to  separate  intellectual  and  moral  and 
religious  culture  ?  Each  should  promote  the  other; 
and  neither  would  seem  to  be  sufficient  by  itself.  All 
seem  to  agree  with  Mr.  Spencer  that  moral  truth  needs 
the  moral  feelings  of  religion  to  make  it  effective. 
And  now:  Is  religion,  the  inspirer  of  this  feeling, 
dying?     If  so,  morality  is  dying." 

''The  religious  Positivism  of  Comte,"  said  the 
host,  "  as  interpreted  by  Mr.  Mill,  is  religion  without 
a  God." 

Mr.  Mill  said  in  reply:  "We  venture  to  think  that 
a  religion  may  exist  without  belief  in  a  God,  and  that 
a  religion  without  a  God  may  be,  even  to  Christians, 
an  introduction  and  profitable  object  of  contempla- 
tion. It  has  been  said  that  whoever  believes  in  'the 
Infinite  nature  of  Duty  '  is  religious.  Comte  refers 
the  obligations  of  duty,  as  well  as  all  sentiments  of 
devotion,  to  a  concrete  object,  at  once  ideal  and  real  : 
the  Human   Race,  conceived    as  a  continuous  whole, 


94  IS  /RELIGION  DYING? 

including  the  past,  the  present  and  the  future.  This 
he  calls  the  Grand  Etre,  the  great  Being." 

"  Can  we  not,  and  for  eighteen  hundred  years  have 
we  not,"  said  the  Dean,  ''  had  in  Christianity,  all  the 
moral  teachings  that  the  philosophers,  including 
Comte,  propose,  and  vastly  more  ?  The  morality  they 
offer  is  already  a  part  of  and  taken  from  Christianity. 
There  is  nothing  new  in  Positivism  except  its  meta- 
physical conceit  of  what  they  call  ^  the  organism  of 
Humanity.'  There  is  absolutely  no  such  thing  as  the 
Grand  Etre  of  Humanity,  as  fancied  by  Comte,  any 
more  than  there  is  anything  in  Positive  morality  new 
to  Christianity." 

III.  The  Religion  of  both  Worship  and  Morality — 
Christ. 

"The  Master  condemned  the  tree  that  bore  nothing 
but  leaves,"  remarked  the  Dean,  "  and  the  religious 
theories  die  that  do  not  result  in  religious  practice. 
But  if  there  be  no  good  practice  with  religion,  is 
it  likely  that  practice  will  be  better  without  it  ? 
Religion  without  conduct  will  die  now  as  it  did  in  the 
past.  This  is  the  inexhaustible  religion  of  faith  and 
works — of  creed  and  deed — of  theology  and  morality. 
We  have  seen  that  Polytheism  or  the  ancient  religions 
of  worship  without  morality  became  exhausted,  and 
expired  in  Greece  and  Rome  ;  and  that  Atheism, 
under  the  sham  of  Positivism,  which  claims  to  know 
by  positive  experience  and  observation  the  laws  but 
not  the  causes,  did  not  suffice  in  France  ;  and  that 
Agnosticism  which  denies  all  knowledge  of  either  laws 
or  causes — we  have  seen  that  these  intellectual 
schemes  excluding  religion  or  not,  by  a  vast  majority 
of  thinkers,  regarded  as  sufficient  for  modern  civiliz- 
ation; yet,  both  these  elements  of  worship  and  moral- 
ity, of  faith   and   conduct,  are  found   united    in    the 


POSITIVISM.  95 

Christian  religion.  Has  experience  of  the  ages  led  us 
to  any  satisfactory  philosophy  of  life  ?  Is  religion 
religion,  without  a  morality,  or  can  there  be  a  true 
morality  without  a  true  religion  ?  Christianity  is  not 
only  a  creed  but  a  deed.  As  Polytheism  looked  only 
to  duty  to  the  gods,  ignoring  those  to  man,  so 
Positivistic  Atheism  looks  only  to  duty  to  man,  ignor- 
ing both  God  and  duty  to  God.  Each  has  a  truth 
belonging  to  the  other,  and  each  needed  a  truth  the 
other  had.  To  each  the  other  was  a  half.  That 
which  Positivism  discusses  as  the  essential  unity  of 
Humanity,  Christianity  reveals  as  the  spiritual  unity 
of  Humanity.  Positivism  is  no  new  phase  of  thought. 
It  is  the  milk  of  speculative  opinion  with  the  cream 
of  Christianity  skimmed  off.  It  is  '  the  opposition  of 
science  falsely  so-called.'  It  is  science  without  a 
philosophy,  and  a  religion  without  a  God.*  Its  central 
thought  is  the  continuous  unity  of  the  race,  with  its 
bond  or  nexiLS  in  society,  as  opposed  to  the  unity  of 
the  race  with  its  bond  or  unity  in  its  Creator.  That 
which  is  true  in  Positivisai  is  a  plagiarism  from 
Christianity,  and  that  in  it  which  is  not  a  plagiarism 
from  Christianity,  is  worthless.  Christianity  without 
its  morality,  is  a  vain  worship;  without  its  worship, 
Christianity  proposes  an  impossible  morality.  Faith 
inspires  works,  and  works  measure  faith.  There  is  no 
creature  Christianity  does  not  love;  no  right  it  does 
not  recognize;  no  duty  it  does  not  enjoin;  no  social 
need  it  does  not  help;  no  social  hindrance  it  does  not 
oppose;  no  hope  it  does  not  cherish;  no  sorrow  it  does 
not  soothe;  and  no  grave  it  does  not  seal  with  a  resur- 
rection promise.  We  shall  show  the  superiority  of 
Christian  worship  and  morality  by  contrasting  them 
with  the  atheistical  morality  which  seeks  to  supplant 

*  Mill's  Comte,  p.  120. 


96  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

them.  Something  must  govern  conduct,  and  in  the 
end,  that  will  govern  it  which  can  govern  it  the  best. 
The  fittest  wins.  Is  Christianity  that  ?  If  not,  what 
is  better  ? 

'^  Christiaiiity  will  su7'vive  as  the  fittest  of  all  social 
forces  ;  that  is,  a  Christianity  uniting  both  faith  and 
works,  which  only  is  true  Christianity.  It  will  live  as 
long  as  it  helps  humanity.  This  law  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  if  it  be  a  law,  includes  every  principle  of 
self-preserving  superiority  both  in  what  a  thing  is  in 
itself,  and  in  its  power  to  adapt  itself  to  what  it  is 
not." 

Dr.  Frothingham  said,  ''  As  to  the  creeds  of  to-day 
I  believe  the  next  hundred  years  will  see  great 
changes  in  them,  but  I  do  not  think  them  destined  to 
disappear." 

The  Dean  said,  ''  Nothing  dies  that  is  able  to  live. 
That  is  the  best  force  that  does  the  best  work.  In 
other  words,  that  survives  as  the  fittest  — continues  its 
existence — which  helps  everything,  and  which  every- 
thing helps.  Everybody  preserves  that  which  is 
necessary  to  everybody.  People  may  destroy  each 
other,  but  not  the  bread  and  the  water,  the  light  and 
the  air  which  all  need,  and  upon  which  all  live.  And 
why  should  religion  die  ?  Its  superstitions  will  cease, 
but  what  part  of  Christian  faith  is  wrong  ?  Are  its 
hopes  of  a  better  world — its  comforts,  its  morals,  its. 
rites  wrong?  If  all  these  and  more  are  not  good, 
what  is  better?  Helping  everything,  it  cannot  perish, 
for  the  law  of  self-preservation  compels  everything 
in  the  end  to  help  it.  If  morality  with  religion  has 
not  sufficed  for  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  is  it 
likely  that  morality  without  religion  will  do  any  bet- 
ter ?     If  the  existence  of  a  personal  God  and  the  im- 


POSITIVISM  AND    CHRISTIANITY.  97 

mortality  of  the  soul  be  denied,  is  it  likely  that  men  will 
observe  higher  moral  conduct  with  lower  spiritual 
motives  ?  If  men  will  not  be  moral  from  a  sense 
of  obligation  to  God,  however  incomprehensible  he 
may  be,  is  it  probable  that  they  will  be  more  moral 
by  speculations  about  a  fetish  called  Humanity,  no 
less  incomprehensible  ?  We  have  seen  man  as  an  in- 
dividual, but  not  Humanity  as  a  whole.  If  men  can 
bring  themselves  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  Hu- 
manity, how  can  they  deny  the  existence  of  a  Divinity  ? 
Humanity  is  but  a  name,  and  not  a  reality.  The 
struggle  of  this  hour  is  between  the  ancient  theistis- 
tic  moralities  of  Christianity  with  theistic  sanctions, 
and  modern  atheistic  moralities  of  Positivism  without 
sanctions  of  any  kind.  It  is  a  struggle  between  a 
system  with  power  and  a  system  without  power.  Re- 
ligion teaches  a  personal  Power,  and  science,  an  im- 
personal Power  in  the  universe,  and  that  is  all  the 
difference  between  them. 

''  Christianity  includes  both  theory  and  practice, 
both  a  rule  and  a  life,  both  faith  and  works.  '  Faith 
without  works  is  dead.'  Christianity  with  living 
power  in  it,  is  a  conformity  of  the  life  to  the  rule. 
Religion  is  a  sense  of  dependence  and  of  responsibil- 
ity.  Pagan  mythology  was  the  first  ;  Christianity 
is  both  ;  Atheism  is  neither.  Dependence  looks  to 
a  providence,  and  gives  worship  ;  responsibility 
looks  to  divine  authority  and  gives  ^  conduct. 
Without  a  sense  of  responsibility,  moral  conduct  is 
impossible,  and  worship  is  a  superstition.  There  is  no 
moral  truth  new  to  Positivism  that  is  not  old  to  Christi- 
anity. Let  us  put  Christianity  and  Positivism  side 
by  side  and  see  how  far  this  is  so.  [  What  the  Dean 
stated  in  a  general  way  may  here  be  shown  in  a  more 


IS  RELIGION  DYING? 


particular  way.]       Christianity  as    a   social    force,  is 

"  (a)  Fittest  in  its  nature. 


Christiatiity,  over  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago,  taught 
The  Unity  of  Humanity  in 
God. 

"  In  Him  we  live  and  move, 
and  have  our  being.  Hegiveth 
to  all  life,  and  health,  and  all 
things."     Acts  xvii,  32-32. 

*  The  invisible  things  of 
Him  from  the  creation  of  the 
world  are  clearly  seen,  being 
understood  by  the  things  that 
are  made,  even  his  eternal 
power  and  Godhead,  so  that 
they  are  without  excuse." 
Rev.  i,  20. 

Christianity  also  teaches  a 
unity  of  Humanity  in  man. 

Christ's    Last  Prayer. 

"  Holy  Father,  keep  through 
thine  own  name  those  whom 
thou  hast  given  me,  that  they 
all  may  be  one,  as  thou,  Father, 
art  in  me,  and  I  in  Thee,  that 
they  all  may  be  one  in  us,  that 
they  may  be  made  perfect  in 
one."     John  xvii,  2. 

"  All  ye  are  brethren."  Matt, 
xxiii,  8. 

"We  are  members  one  of 
another."     Eph.  iv,  25. 

God  ,  "hath  made  of  one 
blood  all  nations  of  men,  for 
to  dwell  on  all  the  face  of  the 
earth."  Acts  xvii,  26.  "For 
in  Him  we  live  and  move,  and 
have  our  being."     lb.  28. 

"  With  God  there  is  no  re- 
spect of  person,  Christ  came 
to  call  not  the  righteous,  but 
sinners  to  repentance." 

"  But  ye  have  not  so  learned 
Christ;  if  so  be  that  ye  have 
heard    Him,    and     have    been 


Positivism,  not  more  than 
fifty  years  ago,  taught  The 
Unity  of  Humanity  in  Man. 

"  Humanity  is  the  great  Col- 
lective Life  of  which  human 
beings  are  individuals;  it  must 
be  conceived  of  as  an  organism 
— as  having  an  existence  apart 
from  human  beings,  just  as  we 
conceive  each  human  being  to 
have  an  existence  apart  from, 
though  dependent  on,  the  in- 
dividual cells  of  which  his 
organism  is  composed.  This 
Collective  Life  is  in  Comte's 
system  the  Eire  Supreme,  the 
only  one  we  can  know,  there- 
fore, the  only  one  we  can  wor- 
ship." (Lewes  on  Comte,  p. 
342,  Bohn,  Ed.) 

"  The  power  which  may  be 
acquired  over  the  mind  by  the 
idea  of  the  general  interest  of 
the  human  race,  both  as  a 
source  of  emotion  and  as  a 
motive  to  conduct,  many  have 
perceived;  but  we  know  not  if 
any  one  before  M.  Comte  real- 
ized so  fully  as  he  has  done  all 
the  majesty  of  which  that  idea 
is  susceptible.  It  ascends  into 
the  unknown  recesses  of  the 
past,  embraces  the  manifold 
present,  and  descends  into  the 
indefinite  and  unforeseeable  fu- 
ture. Forming  a  collective  ex- 
istence w'ithout  assignable  be- 
ginning or  end.  it  appeals  to 
that  feeling  of  the  Infinite, 
which  is  deeply  rooted  in  hu- 
man nature,  and  which  seems 
necessary  to  the  imposingness 
of  all  our  highest  concep- 
tions." 

"  That  the  ennobling  power 
of   this  grand   conception  may 


CHRIS TIA N  ALTR UISM. 


taught  by  Him,  as  the  truth  is 
in  Jesus,  that  ye  put  off 
concerning  the  former  conver- 
sation the  old  man,  which  is 
corrupt  according  to  the  de- 
ceitful lusts;  and  be  renewed 
in  the  spirit  of  your  mind;  and 
that  ye  put  on  the  new  man, 
which  after  God  is  created  in 
righteousness  and  true  holi- 
ness."    Eph.  iv,  20. 

"Ye  ought  to  support  the 
weak,  and  to  remember  the 
words  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  how 
He  said,  It  is  more  blessed  to 
give  than  to  receive."  Acts 
XX,  35. 

Is  there  anything  new  there- 
fore, in  Positivism  ?  Has  not 
Christianity  from  first  to  last 
sought  to  repress  all  forms  of 
selfishness?  The  Master  said, 
"  Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 
Love  your  enemies;  bless  them 
that  curse  you;  do  good  to 
them  that  hate  you,  and  pray 
for  them  which  despitefully 
use  you  and  persecute  you." 


have  its  full  efficacy,  we  should,, 
with  M.  Comte,  regard  the 
Grand  Eire,  Humanity,  or 
Mankind,  as  composed  in  the 
past  solely  of  those  who,  in 
every  age  and  position,  have 
played  their  part  worthily  in 
life.  It  is  only  as  thus  re- 
stricted that  the  aggregate  of 
our  species  becomes  an  object 
deserving  our  veneration.  The 
unworthy  members  of  it  are 
best  dismissed  from  our  habit- 
ual thoughts."  (Mill's  Comte,. 
p.  I23-) 


"  (b)  Fittest  by  itspowej^  of  adaptation,  to  the  individual 
man,  to  society  and  to  nations,  or  the  living  for  others, 
called  Altruism. 


Altruism  of  Chrlst: 

"  For  scarcely  for  a  right- 
eous man  will  one  die;  yet  per- 
adventure  for  a  good  man 
some  would  even  darie  to  die. 
But  God  commendeth  His  love 
toward  us,  in  that,  while  we 
were  yet  sinners,  Christ  died 
for  us."  Romans  v,  7,  8.  "  I 
live  by  the  faith  of  the  Son  of 
God,  who  loved  me,  and  gave 
himself  for  me."     Gal.   ii,  20. 

"  Seeing  ye  have  purified 
your  souls  in  obeying  the  truth 
through    the    Spirit,   unto    un- 


Altruism  of  Comte: 

Men  must  live  not  so  spec- 
ially for  the  good  of  each  other 
as  for  the  good  of  Humanity. 

As  to  the  moral  affections, 
the  Positivists  say  "  that  the 
Real  Life  is  dominated  by  the 
affections.  The  heart  is  the 
necessary  centre  of  our  Unity. 
The  social  unity  would  be  im- 
possible without  the  discipline 
of  the  individual;  but  for  such 
a  task  merely  mental  action  is 
too  weak.  Considerations  ad- 
dressed only  to   the  reasoning 


100 


IS  RELIGION  DYING? 


feigned  love  of  the  brethren, 
see  that  ye  love  one  another 
with  a  pure  heart  fervently." 
I  Peter  i,  22. 

"  Be  ye  all  of  one  mind, 
having  compassion  one  of  an- 
other: love  as  brethren;  be 
pitiful,  be  courteous;  not  ren- 
dering evil  for  evil,  or  railing 
for  railing;  but  contrariwise, 
blessing."     I  Peter  iii,  8-9. 

"  Herein  is  love,  not  that 
we  loved  God,  but  that  He 
loved  us,  and  sent  His  Son  to 
be  a  propitiation  for  our  sins. 
Beloved,  if  God  so  loved  us, 
we  ought  also  to  love  one  an- 
other. No  man  hath  seen  God 
at  any  time.  If  we  love  one 
another  God  dwelleth  in  us, 
and  His  love  is  perfected  in 
us.  And  this  commandment 
have  we  from  Him,  That  he 
who  loveth  God,  loves  his 
brother  also."   I  John  iv,  10-24. 

"  Bear  ye  one  another's  bur 
dens,  and  so  fulfil  the  law  of 
Christ."     Gal.  vi,  2. 

"Give  to  him  that  asketh 
thee.  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you,  do  good 
to  them  that  hate  you,  and 
pray  for  them  that  despitefully 
use  you  and  persecute  you." 
Matt,  v,  44. 

"  We  ought  to  lay  down  our 
lives  for  the  brethren."  I  John 
iii,  16. 


faculties  amount  to  nothing  at 
all  in  the  presence  of  passion. 
The  only  discipline  of  which 
the  individual  is  susceptible 
consists  in  the  repression  of 
personality  by  the  develop- 
ment of  sociality.  Disinter- 
ested love  must  be  awaked 
and  stimulated  and  cherished 
as  the  only  power  capable  of 
really  quelling  our  great  ene- 
my— the  true  Satan — the  nat- 
urally preponderating  selfish- 
ness." (Edgar  on  the  Positive 
Religion  of  Humanity.) 

'*  We  do  not  doubt  that  child- 
ren and  young  persons  will  one 
day  be  again  systematically 
disciplined  in  self-mortifica- 
tion; that  they  will  be  taught, 
as  in  antiquity,  to  control  their 
appetites,  to  brave  dangers, 
and  submit  voluntarily  to  pain, 
as  simple  exercises  in  educa- 
tion. Nor  can  any  pains  taken 
be  too  great  to  form  the  habit, 
and  develop  the  desire,  of 
being  useful  to  others  and  to 
the  world,  by  the  practice,  in- 
dependently of  reward  and  of 
every  personal  consideration, 
of  positive  virtue  beyond  the 
bound  of  prescribed  duty." 
(Mill's  Comte,  p.  134.) 

"The  Golden  Rule  of  Moral- 
ity, in  M.  Comte's  religion,  is 
to  live  for  others,  znvre  pouj 
'autrie.  To  do  as  we  would 
be  done  by,  and  to  love  our 
neighbor  as  ourselves,  are  not 
sufficient  for  him.  They  par- 
take, he  thinks,  of  the  nature 
of  personal  calculations.  We 
should  endeavor  not  to  love 
ourselves  at  all.  We  shall  not 
succeed  in  it,  but  we  should 
make  the  nearest  approach  to 
it  possible.  Nothing  less  will 
satisfy  him,  as  towards  human- 
ity, than  the  sentiment  which 


THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY. 


101 


THE    DUTIES    TAUGHT 
CHRISTIANITY. 


BY 


The  Catechism  taught  each 
Christian  child  for  centuries: 

Q.  What  is  thy  duty  toward 
God? 

A.  My  duty  toward  God  is, 
to  believe  in  him;  to  fear  him; 
and  to  love  him  with  all  my 
heart,  with  all  my  mind,  with 
all  my  soul,  and  with  all  my 
strength;  to  worship  him;  to 
give  him  thanks;  to  put  my 
whole  trust  in  him;  to  honor 
his  holy  Name  and  His  Word; 
and  to  serve  him  truly  all  the 
days  of  my  life. 

Q.  What  is  thy  duty  toward 
thy  neighbor  ? 

A.  My  duty  toward  my 
neighbor  is,  to  love  him  as 
myself,  and  to  do  to  all  men  as  I 
would  they  should  do  unto  me. 
To  love,  honor,  and  succor  my 
father  and  mother;  to  honor 
and  obey  the  civil  authority;  to 
submit  myself  to  all  my  gov- 
ernors, teachers,  spiritual  pas- 
tors, and  masters;  to  order  my- 
self lowly  and  reverently  to  all 
my  betters;  to  hurt  nobody  by 
word  or  deed;  to  be  true  and 
just  in  all  my  dealings.  To 
bear  no  malice  nor  hatred  in 
my  heart;  to  keep  my  hands 
from  picking  and  stealing,  and 
my  tongue  from,  evil  speaking, 
lying  and  slandering;  to  keep 
my  body  in  temperance,  sober- 
ness and  chastity;  not  to  covet 
nor  desire  other  men's  goods; 
l)ut  to  learn  and  labor  truly  to 
get  mine  own  living,  and  do 
my  duty  in  that  state  of  life 
which  it  shall  please  God  to 
call  me. 
[8] 


one  of  his  favorite  writers, 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  addresses 
to  God.  A  mem  te  plus  quam 
me,  nee  me  nisi  propter  te^ 
(Mill's  Comte,  p.  125.) 

THE  DUTIES  TAUGHT  ^Y 
POSITIVISM. 

Positivism  acknowledges  no 
God,  and  therefore  acknowl- 
edges no  duties,  reverence  or 
responsibility  to  any.  Human- 
ity is  in  place  of  God. 

A  man's  duties  are  rather  to 
society  than  to  himself.  "  So- 
ciety," says  Dr.  Frothing- 
ham  (Religion  of  Humanity), 
"preaches  contentment,  dis- 
interestedness, peacefulness, 
faith,  self-control,  joy." 

In  Positive  Philosophy,  hu- 
man nature  is  sufficient  for 
human  nature.  If  it  needed 
supernatural  help,  there  is 
none  to  supply  it. 

''Prayer,"  says  Mill,  "ac- 
cording to  M.  Comte,  does 
not  mean  asking;  it  is  a  mere 
outpouring  of  feeling,  .  .  but 
must  be  in  all  cases  to  women." 
(Mill's  Comte,  p.  136.) 


102  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

"  But,"  said  another  Positivist  present,  "though  we 
may  not  propose  a  morality  new  to  Christianity,  yet 
Christian  morality  is  so  mixed  up  with  supernatural- 
ism  that  we  can  subject  it  to  no  scientific  test  as  we 
can  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  taught  by  our  great 
philosophy." 

'^  Right  here,"  remarked  the  Dean,  "  be  it  well 
noted,  that  Christianity  was  the  first  to  appoint  the 
test  of  experience.  '  Whoso  doeth  my  will,'  says 
Christ,  '  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.'  '  By  their  fruits 
ye  shall  know  them.'  Dare  any  merely  human  philos- 
ophy challenge  such  a  test  ?  If  Christianity  has  not 
and  cannot  bear  more,  better  and  other  fruit  than  the 
so-called  Religion  of  Humanity,  then  renounce  it.  If 
there  is  anything  more  humane  than  the  religion  of 
Christ,  what  is  it  ?  What,  as  to  man  and  before  the 
laws  of  civilized  countries,  has  done  more  for  woman 
to  sanctify  her  relations  to  man  as  wife;  what  has 
done  more  for  her  than  the  equity  laws  devised  by 
Christian  clergymen,  as  to  her  dower  as  distributee 
of  her  husband's  estate  ?  What  has  more  protected 
children,  lunatics  and  idiots  ?  Who  more  than  Stephen 
Langton,  a  Popish  Cardinal,  ever  wrote  such  laws  for 
human  freedom  as  the  Magna  Charta  ?  They  are  the 
bulwark  of  our  liberties  to-day.  They  entered,  once 
for  all,  into  the  civil  or  juristic  life  of  the  world.  Men 
are  most  free  when  possessed  of  that  liberty  over  pas- 
sions of  selfishness  and  spiritual  fear,  wherewith  Christ 
hath  made  them  free.  The  Positivist  cannot  announce 
a  desired  dignity  of  humanity  in  its  organic  unity  or 
ultimate  exaltation,  that  Christianity  has  not  an- 
nounced for  ages  before,  and  yet  announces  as  its 
peculiar  and  previous  teaching.  But  there  is  this  all- 
important  distinction  between   this  religion  of  human 


MR.    LEWES.  103 

conduct  without  religion  and  that  religion  of  human 
conduct  with  religion,  and  that  is  one  oi power'' 

"The  religion  of  unqualified  altruism,"  remarked 
Mr.  Spencer,  "  arose  to  correct  by  an  opposite  excess 
the  religion  of  unqualified  egoism."* 

"I  cannot  forbear," f  said  Mr.  Lewes,  "from  point- 
ing out  one  immense  omission  in  Comte's  Religion  of 
Humanity.  It  makes  religion  purely  and  simply  what 
has  hitherto  been  designated  morals.  In  thus  limit- 
ing religion  to  the  relations  in  which  we  stand  toward 
one  another,  and  toward  humanity,  Comte  leaves  an 
important  element  aside  ;  for  even  upon  his  own  show- 
ing, humanity  can  only  be  the  Supreme  Being  of  oicr 
world — it  cannot  be  the  Supreme  Being  of  the  universe. 
To  limit  the  universe  to  our  planet  is  to  take'a  rustic, 
untravelled  view  of  this  great  subject.  If,  in  this  our 
terrestrial  sojourn,  all  we  can  distinctly  know  must  be 
limited  to  the  sphere  of  our  planet,  nevertheless  even 
here,  we,  standing  on  this  ball  of  earth  and  looking 
into  the  infinite  of  which  we  know  it  to  be  but  an 
atom,  must  irresistibly  feel  and  know  that  the  human- 
ity worshipped  here  cannot  extend  its  dominion,  there. 
I  say,  therefore,  that  supposing  our  relations  toward 
humanity  may  one  day  be  systematized  into  a  distinct 
cultus^  and  made  a  religion,  and  supposing  further  our 
whole  practical  priesthood  to  be  limited  to  it,  there 
must  still  remain  for  us,  outlying  this  terrestrial  sphere, 
the  other  sphere  named  Infinite,  into  which  our  eager 
and  aspiring  thoughts  TtV// wander,  carrying  with  them, 
as  ever,  the  obedient  emotions  of  love  and  awe.  So 
that  beside  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  there  must  be 
Religion  of  the  Universe;  beside  the  conception  of  hu- 

*  See  p.  182-186  of  Spencer  on  Sociology. 

f  Comte's  Philosophy  of  the  Sciences,  Bohn's  edition,  p.  342. 


104  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

manity,  we  need  the  conception  of  a  God  as  the  infinite 
life,  from  whom  the  universe  proceeds,  not  in  alien  in- 
difference— not  in  estranged  subjection — but  in  the  ful- 
ness of  abounding  power,  as  the  incarnation  of  resistless 
activity.  In  plainer  language,  there  must  ever  remain 
the  old  distinction  between  religion  and  morality — 
between  our  relations  to  God  and  our  relations  to 
man;  the  only  difference  between  the  old  and  the  new 
being  that  in  the  old  theology  moral  precepts  were 
inculcated  with  a  view  to  a  celestial  habitat;  in  the 
new  they  will  be  inculcated  with  a  view  to  the  general 
progress  and  happiness  of  the  race." 

Mr.  Mill  replied  :  ''  M.  Comte  says,  that  assuming 
the  existence  of  a  Supreme  Being  (which  he  is  as 
far  from'  denying  as  affirming),  the  best,  and  even  the 
only,  way  in  which  we  can  rightly  worship  Him,  is  by 
doing  our  utmost  to  love  and  serve  that  other  great 
being  (humanity)  whose  inferior  Providence  has  be- 
stowed on  us  all  the  benefits  that  we  owe  to  the  labors 
and  virtues  of  a  former  generation.  It  may  not  be 
consonant  to  usage  to  call  this  a  religion;  but  the 
term,  so  applied,  has  a  meaning,  and  one  which  is  not 
adequately  expressed  by  any  other  word.  Candid 
persons  of  all  creeds  may  be  willing  to  admit,  that  if 
a  person  has  an  ideal  object,  his  attachment  and  sense 
of  duty  toward  which  are  able  to  control  and  discip- 
line all  his  other  sentiments  and  propensities,  and 
prescribe  to  him  a  rule  of  life,  that  person  has  a  reli- 
gion; and  though  every  one  naturally  prefers  his  own 
religion  to  any  other,  all  must  admit  that  if  the  object 
of  this  attachment,  and  of  this  feeling  of  duty,  is  the 
aggregate  of  our  fellow  creatures,  this  religion  of  the 
infidel  cannot  in  honesty  and  conscience,  be  called  in- 
trinsically a  bad  one."* 

*  Mill's  Comte,  p.  121. 


HUXLEY  AND    COMTE.  105 

"That  part  of  M.  Comte's  writings,"  said  Professor 
Huxley,  "which  deals  with  the  philosophy  of  physical 
science,  appeared  to  me  to  possess  singularly  very 
little  value.  Great,  however,  was  my  perplexity,  not 
to  say  disappointment;  as  I  followed  the  progress  of 
this  ^  mighty  son  of  earth  '  in  his  work  of  reconstruc- 
tion. Undoubtedly  '  Dieu  '  disappeared,  but  the  Nou- 
veaic  Grand-Etre  Supi'eme,  a  gigantic  fetish,  turned 
out  brand-new  by  M.  Comte's  own  hands,  reigned  in  his 
stead.  '  Roi,'  also  was  not  heard  of;  but  in  his  place 
I  found  a  minutely  defined  organization,  which,  if  it 
ever  came  into  practice,  would  exert  a  despotic  au- 
thority such  as  no  Sultan  has  rivalled,  and  no  Puritan 
Presbytery  in  its  palmiest  days  could  hope  to  excel. 
While  as  for  the  '  Culte  systematique  de  L'Humanite,' 
I,  in  my  blindness,  could  not  distinguish  it  from  sheer 
Popery,  with  M.  Comte  in  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  and 
the  names  of  most  of  the  saints  changed.*  In  fact, 
M.  M.  Comte's  philosophy,  in  practice,  might  be  com- 
pendiously described  as  Catholicism  minus  Christian- 

ity."t 

"That  is  no  religion,"  remarked  the  Dean,  "for  one 
which  is  not  a  religion  for  all.  All  may  be  saved  by 
Christ,  but  Altruism  or  the  sacrifice  of  one's  self  is  an 
impossibility  to  the  totality  of  human  nature,  except 
as  a  Christian  grace.  The  invincible  law  of  self-pres- 
ervation absolutely  forbids  it.  Under  cases  most  like 
it,  the  apparent  Altruist  has  some  compensating  and 
selfish  motive.  His  own  pleasure,  in  some  way,  is 
paramount.  It  is  useless  to  ignore  the  real  weakness 
of  human  nature  for  a  romantic  theory.  All  lines  of 
interest  centre  at  the  grave.     If  the  grave  be  dark,  all 

*  Huxley  :    Lay  Sermons,  p.  148. 
f  lb.,  p.  140. 


106  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

else  is  dark.  If  life  be  all,  its  brevity  and  troubles 
make  it  pessimistic  to  most.  The  weak  man  cannot 
reach  the  ideal  virtues  of  the  strong  few.  Virtue 
may  be  its  own  reward,  not  its  own  inspiration,  and 
weak  human  nature  must  be  driven  to  seek  it  by  fear 
or  drawn  to  embrace  it  by  hope." 

(c)   Fittest  in  its  power  of  resistance. 

The  Dean  continued,  "  It  has  struggled  with  the 
poverty  of  its  disciples  and  survived  ;  it  has  struggled 
with  the  enervating  and  corrupting  wealth  of  its 
disciples,  and  survived  ;  it  has  struggled  with  the 
power  of  Emperors,  and  survived  ;  it  has  struggled 
with  the  captious  cavils  of  philosophy,  falsely  so- 
called,  and  survived  ;  it  has  struggled  with  unscien- 
tific opposition  of  science,  and  survived  ;  and  for  over 
eighteen  hundred  years,  while  all  else  changed,  em- 
pires rising  and  crumbling,  conquerors  re-mapping 
the  nations,  schools  of  philosophy  blazing  and  expir- 
ing in  darkness,  in  spite  of  faggots,  beasts  and 
dungeons,  this  religion  has  survived. 

''  It  is  now  confronted  by  Positivism — the  boldest 
and  the  weakest  inherently  of  all  opposers.  One  class 
say  they  know  nothing  of  anything ;  and  another 
claims  to  know  nothing  but  laws.  But  they  cannot 
tell  what  these  laws  are,  and  the  laws  will  not  talk 
about  themselves — or,  in  the  language  of  you,  Mr. 
Mill,  '  the  laws  of  nature  cannot  account  for  their  own 
origin.'  This  positive  agnosticism  and  this  agnostic 
positivism  are  the  giants  to  overthrow  Christianity  ! 
But  in  the  eternal  fitness  of  things  this  cannot  pos- 
sibly be — they  attempt  too  much.  Other  skepticisms 
of  more  strength  have  failed  before  them.  As  often 
as  humanity  relies  merely  upon  itself,  it  fails.  It 
failed  in  Greece  in  the   verv  face  of    all  the   Philoso- 


UNIVERSAL   DEPENDENCE.  107 

phers.  It  failed  in  Rome  in  the  face  of  the  Republic 
and  in  the  face  of  the  Empire.  It  failed  in  France, 
when  the  goddess  of  Reason  was  enthroned  and 
legalized  assassins  cut  the  throats  of  her  worshippers. 
It  fails  even  within  the  pale  of  the  Church,  just  so 
far  as  professing  Christians  fall  under  a  worldly 
spirit,  and  aim  at  worldly  ends.  It  fails  in  every  in- 
dividual, as  in  Peter,  who  trusts  in  his  own  strength. 
Withhold  the  sun  from  the  seed,  and  gravitation  trom 
the  atom,  the  molecule,  or  the  mass  and  they  are 
dead.  Nothing  has  power  in  itself.  Power  is  a  gift, 
and  the  greater  the  power  the  more  distant  its  source 
and  the  profounder  the  mystery.  Humanity,  ifi  itself^ 
has  power  of  neither  mind,  motive  nor  deed.  'We 
know  but  in  part.'  '  We  fade  away  suddenly  like  the 
grass.'  The  mistake  of  many  is  in  shutting  their 
eyes  to  the  omnipresence  of  the  dependence.  Indeed, 
they  admit  it  when  they  attempt  to  set  up  the  organ- 
ism of  Humanity,  but  they  strangely  deny  it  when 
they  state  the  religious  conditions  of  that  Humanity. 
Environment  is  a  momentous  fact  in  human  character 
and  conduct.  Every  relation  helps  or  hinders  us. 
Superior  minds  help  inferior  minds,  and  just  how 
high  this  help  is  to  go,  no  one  can  tell.  So  weak  is 
man  in  himself  that  he  could  not  be  left  alone. 
Christianity  more  emphatically  than  Positivism, 
reaches  the  unity  of  the  race,  in  saying,  that  as  '  we 
are  members  one  of  another,  so  we  are  to  bear  one 
another's  burdens.'  As  each  belongs  to  all,  all  are 
to  help  each.  Conduct  is  most  deficient  even  in 
the  best.  The  good  we  would  do,  we  do  not,  and 
the  evil  we  would  avoid,  that  we  do.  With  all  the 
help  of  the  glorious  progressions  of  civilization  of 
the  past — all  its  speculations  —sciences,  poesies,  ora- 


108  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

tions,  maxims  of  truth  ;  with  all  its  Psalms,  and  pray- 
ers and  sacrifices,  with  the  best  that  man  alone  could 
do,  and  the  divinest  help  that  he  sought  and  ob- 
tained from  God,  how  has  execution  faltered  upon 
promise  and  intention,  and  how  far  short  has  conduct 
come  from  the  dignity  of  Humanity  and  the  glory  of 
God? 

"  Let  it  be  once  admitted  that  there  must  be  some  re- 
ligion as  distinguished  from  a  non-religious  morality, 
and  the  Christian  religion  will  submit  its  divine  claims 
to  the  judgment  of  mankind.  No  such  faith  has  ever 
been  so  tried  and  so  triumphant.  It  has  proved  the 
fittest  moral  factor  in  all  the  past  and  can  be  well 
trusted  in  the  future.  Religion  is  man's  instinc- 
tive dependence  on  some  power,  conceived  of  as 
many  or  as  one,  supreme  of  all  ;  and  it  is  expressed 
either  by  ritualistic  worship  or  by  moral  conduct 
or  by  both.  Mr.  Mill  alludes  to  religion  as  'that  feel- 
ing of  the  Infinite,  which  is  deeply  rooted  in  human 
nature.'  Polytheism,  embracing  the  worship  of  an- 
cestors and  of  the  Olympian  gods,  is  worship  without 
conduct  ;  Monotheism,  including  Judaism  and  Chris- 
tianity is  the  worship  of  the  One  God  with  conduct ; 
and  Atheism,  including  Positivism  and  Agnosticism 
is  the  effort  to  attain  a  morality  announced  by  the 
intellect,  without  worship,  and  independent  of  any 
and  all  supernatural  considerations.  Most  men  think 
this  impracticable.  The  evolution  of  religion,  like  all 
evolution,  dropping  nothing  and  unifying  all  things, 
may  rise  from  the  idea  of  many  gods  to  the  idea  of 
one  God,  but  not  expire  in  the  idea  of  no  God.  Evo- 
lution extends,  not  restricts,  and  looks  to  perfection 
of  its  object,  not  its  extinction.  So  far  from  the  un- 
derlying   idea    of    religion — theism — fading    out    in 


TRUE   RELIGION.  109 

Atheism,  it  rather  rises  higher  to  a  more  perfect  ideal 
of  Power.  As  religion  is  a  fact,  it  will  be  certain  to 
go  on  by  the  law  of  continuity,  unless  the  hindrances 
to  it  be  overwhelming.  But  are  they  of  that  nature 
and  strength  ?  The  cause  of  whatever  religious  in- 
difference there  may  be,  is  not  in  any  recently  dis- 
covered weakness  or  invalidity  in  its  truth,  but  in 
the  environment  of  indifference  occasioned  by  the  in- 
tense absorption  of  the  minds  of  men  by  other  sub- 
jects. The  people  do  not  stop  to  consider  religion. 
The  cares  and  pleasures  and  riches  of  this  world 
come  in  and  drive  out  the  awe  and  love  of  the  soul, 
which  is  religion.  If  religion  be  not  inherently 
perishable,  it  will  continue  to  live,  though  an  un- 
friendl)^  parallel  may  live  by  its  side.  The  question 
is  not  whether  other  things  may  live  for  awhile,  but, 
'Is  Religion  Dying?'  We  say  not,  because  its  hin- 
drances are  not  internal  but  external  and  transient. 
No  competing  influence  has  anything  like  its  moral 
power.  Trouble  will  bring  us  back,  so  that  the 
world  will  see  and  acknowledge  religion  again. 

'*  Whatever  freedom  of  will  men  may  have,  tends 
to  prevent  a  coercion  of  faith.  Religion  must  be 
favored  by  religious  conditions.  Environment  affects 
religion  as  it  does  all  else.  Shakespeare  says  that 
one  fire  drives  out  another  fire  :  in  other  words,  as 
the  mind  has  but  '  a  single  eye,'  it  is  always  pre-oc- 
cupied  by  a  single  object.  Much  of  one  thing  is  less 
of  something  else.  Inverse  cor-relatives  are  not  both 
present  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  place.  The 
more  thought  the  less  is  the  feeling,  and  the  more 
feeling  the  less  is  the  thought.  The  excess  of  either 
unbalances  the  soul  ;  and  true  religion  and  true  phil- 
osophy is  the   equilibrium  of  both.     The   mind   may 


110  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

be  pre-occupied  by  the  curious  researches  of  learning, 
the  pampering  pleasures  of  wealth,  or  the  embittering 
privations  of  poverty.  Men  think  not  of  the  pleasures 
of  heaven  when  their  minds  are  full  of  the  things  of 
•earth.  Their  hearts  are  lifted  up.  '  The  ox  knoweth 
his  owner  and  the  ass  his  master's  crib,  but  Israel  doth 
not  know,  my  people  do  not  consider.'  For  this  reason 
as  a  feeling  and  worship,  religion  has  ever  had  an  un- 
equal influence  upon  conduct,  whether  as  to  times  or 
number  of  persons.  '  Know  this,  also,'  wrote  Paul  to 
Timothy,  '  that  in  the  last  days  perilous  times  shall 
come.  For  men  shall  be  lovers  of  their  own  selves, 
covetous,  boasters,  proud,  blasphemers,  disobedient 
to  parents,  unthankful,  unholy,  without  natural  affec- 
tion, truce-breakers,  false-accusers,  incontinent,  fierce, 
despisers  of  those  that  are  good,  traitors,  heady, 
high-minded,  lovers  of  pleasures  more  than  the  lovers 
of  God  ;  having  a  form  of  godliness,  but  denying  the 
power  thereof.  From  such  turn  away.  For  of  this 
sort  are  they  which  are  ever  learning,  and  never 
able  to  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth.  Evil 
men  and  seducers  shall  wax  worse  and  worse,  deceiv- 
ing and  being  deceived.' 

"  Thus  we  see  that  the  Church  has  been  warned  to 
expect  indifference,  lukewarmness,  denial  of  the  truth. 
Though  for  eighteen  hundred  years,  the  Church  has 
endured  the  external  pressure  at  times  of  adverse  poli- 
tical events  and  internal  agitations  as  to  doctrine  or 
authority,  it  has  steadily  extended  its  religious  and 
moral  influence  to  every  institution  of  civilization. 
At  intervals,  even  from  the  first,  these  skeptical 
spasms  have  come  and  gone." 

"  The  army  of  liberal  thought,"  said  Professor 
Huxley,  ''  is,  at  present,    in   very    loose    order  ;    and 


PROF.    HUXLEY.  Ill 

many  a  spirited  free-thinker  makes  use  of  his  freedom 
mainly  to  vent  nonsense.  We  should  be  the  better 
for  a  vigorous  and  watchful  enemy  to  hammer  us  in- 
to cohesion  and  discipline  ;  and  I,  for  one,  lament 
that  the  bench  of  Bishops  cannot  show  a  man  of  the 
calibre  of  Butler  of  the  'Analogy,'  who,  if  he  were 
alive,  would  make  short  work  of  much  of  the  cur- 
rent a  priori  infidelity/'  * 

"There  is  now  a  straining,"  remarked  the  Dean, 
''after  new  theories  of  nature."  f 

"  To  what  do  you  attribute  this  ?  "  inquired  the 
host. 

"In  my  opinion,"  replied  the  Dean,  '^  First,  i)ie7is 
minds  are  possessed  with  ambition  for  original  thinking. 

"  We  hear  a  good  deal  of  the  joylessness  of  the 
present  generation,  and  no  doubt  there  is  a  greater 
unrest  and  a  greater  impatience  among  those  who 
lead  the  forward  movement  of  thought  than  in  any 
former  time,  and  partly,  no  doubt,  this  is  true  to 
want  of  trust,  want  of  power  to  lean  on  any  invis- 
ible hand  ;  partly,  too,  to  a  habit  closely  connected 
with  this  want  of  trust — a  habit  contracted  by  men 
of  the  greatest  intellect^  of  straining  to  see  or  say 
something  new.  Even  now  we  are  sure  that  the 
tendency  to  grasp  at  new  ideas  is  often  fatal,  not 
merely  to  the  utilization  of  old  truths,  but  to  the 
mere  holding  of  the  ground  which  had  been  gained 
by  our  ancestors.  All  this  razing  to  the  earth  of 
the  moral  and  religious  beliefs  of  former  days  is 
far  more  loss  to  man  than  the  best  of  the  new 
glimpses  of  truth  are  gain.     And,  indeed,  the  tend- 

*  Huxley  :  Lay  Sermons,  p.  62. 

f  See  an  article  in  Popular  Science  Monthly,  from  the  Specta- 
tor for  Nov.,  1879,  on  Intellectual  Straining  in  Authorship. 


112  IS  RELIGION  D  YING?- 

ency  is  to  eradicate  the  temper  of  repose,  the  heart 
of  confidence  in  what  has  been  gained,  and  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  a  constant  reliance  on  the  stimulus  of 
an  intellectual  excitement,  the  very  essence  of  which 
depends  on  change.  This  state  of  things  existed 
among  the  philosophers  at  Athens.  Paul  says  :  '  The 
Athenians  and  strangers  which  were  there  spent  their 
time  in  nothing  else  but  either  to  tell  or  hear  some 
new  thing.'  Such  mental  fickleness  of  the  few  can- 
not long  affect  the  religious  faith  of  the  many.  It  is 
the  few  that  think  more  than  they  feel  ;  but  the  many 
feel  more  than  they  think,  and  feeling  is  religion." 

"  We  know  very  little,"  said  Mr.  Froude,*  ''  of  the 
conditions  of  intellectual  energy.  In  the  past  history 
of  mankind  it  has  been  intermittent.  Periods  of  ac- 
tivity and  progress  have  alternated  with  periods  of 
rest,  as  if  the  mind  was  like  the  soil,  which  requires  a 
respite  of  stagnation  to  recover  from  an  exhausting 
crop.  It  is  possible,  it  is  even  likely,  that  the  appe- 
tite for  change  which  has  characterized  the  last  cen- 
tury may  be  followed  by  a  wave  of  spiritual  and  pol- 
itical conservatism,  that  science  will  pause  for  awhile 
in  its  discoveries,  and  that  our  new  knowledge  may 
be  allowed  time  to  shape  itself  into  a  form  with  some 
humanity  in  it." 

"The  psychical  history  of  our  race,"  remarked  Pro- 
fessor Winchell,  ''  presents  a  succession  of  religious 
and  intellectual  phases  alternating  with  each  other. 
Faith  and  intellect  move  in  two  equal  intersecting  or- 
bits, having  a  common  centre.  When  the  crisis 
comes  and  faith  and  intellect  change  places,  both 
are  found  to  have  gained  by  all  preceding  alterna- 
tions.   Sometimes,  faith  and  intellect  have  been  united 

*  North  American   Review,   December,  1879. 


PROFESSOR    WINCHELL.  113 

and  sometimes  disunited,  but  always,  by  the  law  of 
antagonism  or  of  co-operation,  they  have  left  the 
moral  life  of  man  upon  a  higher  plane.  These  revolu- 
tions need  not  surprise  us.  They  come  and  they  go, 
not  in  fixed  periods,  but  by  the  fixed  law  of  exhaus- 
tion and  repair. 

"  Second — The  7?iinds  of  men  are  preoccupied  with  the 
materialism  of  science,  as  another  cause  of  Atheistic  or, 
at  least,  Agnostic  doubt. 

"  Scientific  investigations  have  always,  in  the  end, 
strengthened  religion.  Religion  fears  that  science 
will  discover  too  little  rather  than  too  much.  Igno- 
rance is  more  destructive  than  knowledge,  whether  in 
secular  or  sacred  directions.  But  it  is  knowledge,  not 
theories,  all  need."     Said  the  Dean  : 

"  Materialists  discovering  some  of  the  potencies 
manifested  in  matter,  assume  them  to  be  self-existent 
or  eternal,  and  so,  deifying  force,  deny  that  there  is 
any  creating  Being  behind  the  potencies.  To  this  im- 
personal force,  the  mind  of  man  soon  brings  itself  into 
utter  denial  of  all  accountability.  Matter  never  cate- 
chises. Then  the  sense  of  moral  obligation  ceases  ; 
the  moral  man  goes  down,  and,  to  the  extent  of  the 
individuals  thus  morally  collapsed,  society  goes  down. 
The  sense  of  right  and  wrong  is  immediately'  con- 
nected with  a  belief  in  some  Supreme  Being  to  whom 
man  is  responsible.  If  there  be  no  such  being,  there 
is  no  right  and  no  wrong  ;  for  before  the  march  of 
Fate,  things  are  inevitably  what  they  are,  and  there- 
fore neither  right  nor  wrong.  Right  and  wrong  be- 
long to  free,  not  necessary  action.  Duress  takes  all 
responsibility  out  of  conduct.  But  it  is  said  that  these 
materialists  separate  morality  from  religion,  and  live 
innocent  and  moral  lives  without  belief  in  a  personal 


114  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

God.  It  must  be  remembered  that  these  men  have 
been  reared  by  religious  parents,  in  religious  homes, 
and  pass  their  lives  associated  with  those  who  believe 
in  and  worship  a  personal  God.  From  such  influence 
they  cannot  escape.  Besides,  they  do  not  draw  the 
social  consequences  of  their  material  theories.  They 
hold  on  more  or  less  consciously  to  old  conclusions  as 
to  moral  accountability,  while  they  indulge  new  theo- 
ries of  material  manifestations.  No  man  is  an  out  and 
out  Atheist;  but  so  far  as  he  is  an  Atheist,  just  so  far  he 
morally  breaks  down,  except  as  held  up  by  the  moral 
influences  of  those  around  him  who  are  not  Atheists. 
There  is  no  ultimate  triumph  in  Atheism. 

"  Third —  The  conceit  of  science  or  a  mindpre-occiipied  with 
one  line  of  thought  sees  no  importance,  no  interest,  in  other 
thoughts.  Special  minds  give  undue  importance  to  special 
ideas.  Religion  craves  all  possible  light — light  is  the 
mantle  of  God.  The  Church  has  been  the  great 
school  teacher  in  the  past.  In  836  the  Council  at 
Rome  established  schools  for  the  poor.  So  did  the 
Council  at  Lateran,  11 79,  and  the  Council  at  Lyons, 
1256.  The  Church  established  nearly  all  the  great 
schools  and  colleges  of  Europe.  Most  men  of  great 
learning,  such  as  Copernicus  and  Newton,  have  been 
great  churchmen  ;  so  that  it  is  not  culture  that  in- 
jures religion  and  so  civilization,  but  a  culture  that  is 
narrow  and  exclusive  of  the  moral.  A  little  learning 
is,  and  ever  will  be,  a  dangerous  thing.  The  world 
daily  sees  those  who  are  educated  just  enough  to 
make  fools  of  them.  The  crazy  conceits  of  the  half 
educated  Atheists  are  more  destructive  of  personal 
happiness  and  social  order  than  the  credulous  super- 
stition of  the  Middle  Age  peasant.  That  is  best  for 
man  which  leads  to  the  best  conduct.      In  the  religion 


THE   DEAN.  115 

of  a  godless  nature,  man  is  compelled  to  do  as  he  does, 
and  one  act  is  as  right  as  another.  This  evident  er- 
ror will  work  its  own  correction. 

"  Fourth — The  Two  Philosophies. 

"  But  this  belief  in  a  nature  without  a  God,  leads  to 
two  different  philosophies  of  life.  The  cultivated  few 
hope  to  find  social  order  in  philosophy  without  re- 
ligion, but  the  uncultivated  many  care  for  neither 
philosophy  nor  religion,  and  disorder  society  by  their 
brutal  wills.  To  the  fortunate  all  is  for  the  best  ;  to 
the  unfortunate  all  is  for  the  worst  ;  both  are  indiffer- 
ent to  God,  whom  they  deny.  The  rich  are  optimists; 
the  poor  are  pessimists.  One  enjoys  his  wealth  with 
indifference  to  the  poor  ;  and  the  poor  groans  under 
his  dark  fortunes  with  a  despairing  hatred  of  the  rich. 
The  rich  thanks  no  God  for  his  wealth,  and  the  poor 
fears  no  God  when  in  anarchy  he  seeks  to  revenge 
himself  on  the  rich.  The  one  says  :  '  Soul,  take  thine 
ease,  eat,  drink  and  be  merry,  for  thou  hast  much 
goods  laid  up  in  store.'  The  other  says  :  '  There  is 
no  God,  no  hell,  no  heaven,  no  hereafter,  no  right,  no 
wrong,  and  I  will  be  most  of  the  fiend  now,  as  there 
can  be  nothing  of  the  saint  in  the  blank  hereafter.' 

"  Now  to  what  extent  is  this  disorganizing  philos- 
ophy to  prevail  ?  The  skeptical  scientists  are  few  as 
compared  with  the  whole  population  ;  and  they  are 
few  as  compared  with  the  religious  scientists.  Galton, 
in  his  work  on  '  Men  of  Science,'  shows  that  seven  out 
of  every  ten  men  of  science  in  England  belong  to 
some  branch  of  the  Christian  church.  Even  the  other 
three-tenths,  who  may  ignore  religion,  are  not  agreed 
among  themselves.  All  that  skeptics  of  any  age  have 
done  is  to  tear  down.  Nihilism  is  the  result.  They 
claim    to    know    nothing   of    matter  in    the    past    or 


116  IS  RELIGION   D  YING  ? 

of  matter  in  the  future,  and  admit  that  inexorable 
fate  dominates  them  in  the  present. 

"  This  is  the  end  many  learned  of  both  sexes  have 
reached  in  Russia,  and  some  of  all  classes  in  Germany, 
France  and  in  this  country.  What  can  be  expected 
from  such  a  philosophy  of  despair?  The  worst  might 
be  expected,  if  it  were  not  the  fact  that  these  disor- 
ganizing elements  are  opposed  one  to  the  other,  and 
no  one  overwhelmingly  numerous.  The  great  mass 
and  average  of  people  have  no  time  to  confuse  them- 
selves with  disturbing  speculations  ;  the  richt,  with 
their  easy  apathy,  are  necessarily  few  in  number,  and 
the  multitude  of  the  despairing  poor  are  powerless  to 
destroy  for  any  long  period  of  time.  Revolutions  are 
exceptions.  There  must  be  in  the  nature  of  things 
more  order  than  disorder  in  the  world.  Wrong  con- 
ditions soon  right  themselves. 

"  Fifth — A  Moral  Iiiterregmim  is  Moral  Chaos.  A 
change  of  religion  is  a  change  of  morality,  and  any 
possible  interregnum  would,  of  course,  be  so  far  de- 
structive of  civilization.  It  is  equally  certain  that  any 
possible  religious  interregnum  would  be  destructive 
of  all  moral  order.  What  is  morality  ?  It  is  the 
doing  of  that  which  ought  to  be  done.  But  if  the 
materialists  be  right,  and  there  is  no  God,  no  future, 
and  so  no  responsibility,  who  can  say  that  one  thing 
ought  to  be  done  more  than  another  ?  Actions  would 
not  then  be  because  they  ought  to  be,  but  because 
they  must  be.  According  to  materialists,  men  steal 
because  they  must,  and  burn,  kill  and  outrage  the 
innocent  and  helpless,  not  because  they  are  wicked, 
but  because  they  were  created  so  to  act,  and  must  so  act. 
Such  a  philosophy  would  authorize  every  crime,  and  is 
so  understood  by  the  Socialists  and  Revolutionists  who 


THE   DEAN.  117 

preach  it.  The  deeds  of  men  are  responsible  as  con- 
duct either  to  a  personal  finite  man  or  to  a  personal 
infinite  God,  or  they  are  irresponsible,  as  mere  auto- 
matic, inevitable  actions  to  an  impersonal,  compulsory 
nature  or  matter.  But  if  actions  are  irresponsible  to 
an  impersonal,  compulsory  nature,  then  they  are  ne- 
cessary actions  and  not  moral  conduct  at  all,  being 
neither  right  nor  wrong.  But  if  what  we  do  be  either 
right  or  wrong,  as  conduct,  there  must  be  responsi- 
bility for  wrong.  If  responsibility,  it  must  be  to  man 
or  to  God.  If  matter  be  all,  and  there  be  no  God,  a 
fortiori  there  can  be  no  man,  except  as  a  form  of  mat- 
ter. If  man  be  only  a  form  of  matter,  then,  as  matter 
cannot  be  responsible  to  matter — m.an  cannot  be  re- 
sponsible to  man  ;  so  that,  if  there  be  no  God,  there 
can  be  no  responsibility,  and,  if  responsibility,  no  con- 
sequences for  wrong  and  no  safety  to  the  right.  Edu- 
cated by  this  philosophy,  the  Communist  soon  learns 
to  hold  treason  and  patriotism,  honesty  and  dishon- 
esty, peace  and  violence,  truth  and  falsehood  to  be 
equally  right.  This  is  the  practical  result  of  divorc- 
ing morality  from  religion,  or  human  conduct  from 
responsibility  to  some  power  above  man.  Men  must 
choose  between  some  kind  of  religion  and  the  sword. 
Something  must  govern.  In  an  age  of  selfishness, 
when  the  struggle  for  existence  is  universal  and  desper- 
ate ;  when  class  is  angry  with  class,  men  must  become 
either  soldiers  or  Christians,  and  for  awhile  perhaps 
both.  And  as  anticipation  of  the  future  governs  the 
present,  and  as  religion  has  its  power  in  the  problems 
of  the  future,  so  religion  ever  has  and  will  govern 
mankind.  There  are  rhythms  or  inequalities  of  the 
religious  force  as  of  every  other  ;  but  as  the  soul  of 
man  ever  confronts  the  eternal  mystery,  it  will  have 
its  altars  and  its  upward  vision. 

[9] 


118  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

"It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  Christianity  is 
dying.  So  far  from  it,  it  is  ever  under  the  law  of 
evolution,  taking  on  new  life.  A  limited  few  who 
entertain  themselves  with  the  material  speculations  of 
the  ancient  schools,  reproduced  in  the  modern,  may 
become  confused  amidst  a  multitude  of  theories,  but 
the  average  class  have  neither  time  nor  inclination  to 
study  metaph)rsical  infidelity.  They  are  practical,  and 
look  to  practical  results.  The  danger  of  this  class  in 
this  country  is  from  irreligious  customs  introduced 
by  atheistical  foreigners,  not  from  doubts  suggested 
by  investigations  as  to  the  validity  of  Christianity  it- 
self. Science  seems  receding  from  its  atheistical 
materialism.  Its  knowledge  is  far  more  limited  than 
it,  at  one  time,  confidently  expected  it  to  be.  It  has 
not  discovered  the  principle  of  life.  Herbert  Spencer, 
with  equal  force  and  solemnity,  writes,  '  In  all  direc- 
tions our  investigations  bring  us  face  to  face  with  an 
insoluble  enigma.'  We  learn  at  once  the  greatness 
and  the  littleness  of  the  human  intellect — its  power  in 
dealing  with  all  that  comes  within  the  range  of  ex- 
perience, its  impotence  in  dealing  with  all  that  trans- 
cends experience.  We  realize  with  special  vividness 
the  utter  incomprehensibleness  of  the  simplest  fact 
considered  in  itself.  The  scientific  man,  more  truly 
than  any  other,  knoivs  that  in  its  essence  nothing  can 
be  known.  Even  those  rich,  who,  in  the  independence 
incident  to  wealth,  are  indifferent  to  religion,  are  even 
fewer  in  number  than  the  scientific  skeptics.  It  is 
true  that  the  wealth  of  the  ungodly  rich  is  not  sancti- 
fied, and  is  of  no  moral  or  religious  use  to  the  world, 
and  i'n  some  respects  may  be  against  religion  ;  yet 
death  and  the  vicissitudes  of  life,  especially  in 
America,  soon  redistribute   the  fortunes   of  the   few, 


THE   DEAN.  119 

and  so  this  class  cannot  long  injure  the  influence  of 
religion.  The  danger  to  society  is  in  the  irreligion  of 
that  class  who,  having  neither  learning,  wealth,  nor 
religious  hopes,  have  nothing.  They  include  those 
godlessly  and  partially  educated — educated  in 
thoughts  and  not  in  conscience — and  these,  uniting 
with  the  army  of  the  unfortunate,  the  incapable,  the 
unsuccessful,  the  idle,  having  nothing  to  lose  and 
everything  to  be  hoped  for  from  social  changes  and 
political  convulsions — this  class,  now,  as  with  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  is  an  element  of  danger  ;  and  it 
is  possible  that  they  may  disturb  the  social  order  but 
never  destroy  religion.  Indeed,  faith  follows  revolu- 
tions. The  successor  to  Caesar  was  Christ.  The  less 
religion,  the  more  the  despotism!  Except  a  very  few, 
the  great  champions  of  religion,  of  liberty  and  of 
humanity  have  been  Christian  men — such  as  the 
Priests  of  the  Church  against  the  feudal  tyrants — the 
Hamdens  and  Sydneys — the  Chathams  and  the 
Washingtons  of  the  world." 

"  In  point  of  fact,"  inquired  some  one  of  the  com- 
pany, "  Is  not  religion  declining  in  our  Churches  and 
seminaries  of  learning  ?  " 

"  By  no  means,"  replied  >  the  Dean.  "Christianity 
is  increasing  in  the  world.  The  Methodist  Church 
this  year  appropriates  |6oo,ooo  for  missions  against 
1550,000  last  year.  The  following  statistics  of  all  the 
churches  for  thirty  years  show  a  gain  in  America: 

Per  cent  Value  of        Per  cent 

Population,      increase.  Churches,  property.      increase.  Schools. 

1850 23,191,896  38,062     $87,328,800  87,257 

i860 31,443,321  36        54,009      171,397,932        42      115,224 

1870 38,558,371  22       72,450     354,483,581       33     141,429 

"  Religious  college  statistics  also  show  a  great  in- 
crease in  the  Christian  religion: 


120  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

1853-  1878 

Harvard i  in  10  i  in  5 

Brown ....  i  in     5  3  in  5 

Yale I  in    4  2  in  5 

Dartmouth    i  in    4  i  in  3 

Bodowin i  in    4  i  in,3 

Williams i  in    2  4  in  5 

Amherst 5  in    8  4  in  5 

"With  the  founding  of  every  new  town  or  city,  there 
is  the  cemetery,  the  school-house  and  the  church.  To 
say  that  religion  is  dying,  is  to  say  that  the  whole 
supposed  precedure  of  evolution  is  a  mistake,  and  that 
the  world  is  going  backward  and  not  forward.  No 
doubt  many  believers  become  cold,  and  the  church 
may  be  somewhat  powerless  in  the  midst  of  a  genera- 
tion perverted  by  changeable  science,  corrupted  and 
enervated,  as  of  old,  by  plethoric  wealth,  and  made 
bitter  and  despairing  by  the  disappointed  struggles 
of  toil,  but  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  that  every- 
thing progresses  forever.  We  may  be  sure  this  is  so 
of  '  the  truth  that  makes  for  righteousness.'  The  good 
that  is  in  the  Christian  faith  will  be  preserved,  and 
the  errors,  if  any,  which  have  been  added  by  man,  will 
be  dropped;  but  as  a  great  faith,  in  its  old  and 
general  doctrines,  it  will  not  only  continue,  but  in- 
crease. The  hopes  of  this  are,  among  other  reasons, 
in:  [a)  The  recession  of  materialistic  skepticism  be- 
fore the  power  of  Christian  thought  which  it  has 
awakened.  At  first,  the  confident  assertions  of  skep- 
tical science  captured  the  minds  of  many  reading 
people,  and  threatened,  as  some  thought,  all  the  hopes 
of  faith.  But  Christian  thought  soon  rallied  from  its 
surprise.  Strong,  painstaking  minds  began  to  ex- 
amine the  new  theories  of  science  and  the  field  was 
soon  better  understood.  It  was  then  discovered  that 
old  materialistic  theories  had  come  back  under  new 


THE   DEAN.  121 

names — that  words  had  been  substituted  for  argu- 
ments— that  theories  had  been  accepted  as  science — 
that  conclusions  had  not  been  warranted  b)^  premises; 
and  then  religion  became  the  attacking  party,  the 
Nihilism  of  materialism  began  to  appear  in  its  social 
consequences,  and  scientists  not  only  became  more 
cautious  in  statements  and  inference,  but  their  distin- 
guished Virchow  admitted  that  the  great  doctrine  of 
evolution,  which  had  assumed  to  dethrone  theology, 
could  not  claim  to  be  proved  as  a  science.  And  now 
what  ?  Religion  will  gladly  welcome  all  light,  whether 
from  friends  or  enemies;  and  the  more  the  better. 
Let  religion  know  the  worst  that  can  be  said  against 
it,  and  then  reply  patiently,  honestly  and  fully.  If, 
after  so  many  ages,  Christianity,  and  the  Jewish 
religion  out  of  which  it  grew,  can  be  shown  to  be  false, 
let  it  be  shown.  Fortunately  for  Christianity,  its  un- 
friendly critics  now  show  it  no  quarters.  Let  them 
strike  to  their  hearts'  content.  Let  the  old  fight  go 
on  and  be  over  once  more.  Religion  fears  indiffer- 
ence more  than  enmity.  The  factors  of  the  problem 
are  unchanged,  and  so  will  the  result  be.  Right  and 
wrong,  moral  responsibility,  social  order,  death,  are 
the  same  as  ever.  Science  will  help  theology  to  wider 
and  stronger  knowledge  of  God,  His  works  and  His 
economy.  The  more  we  know,  the  more  we  shall  be- 
lieve. The  more  we  know  of  nature,  the  more  we 
magnify  supernature.  '  The  invisible  things  of  Him 
from  the  creation  of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being 
understood  by  the  things  that  are  made,  even  His 
eternal  power  and  godhead.' 

""  {b)  One,  but  not  the  least  significant  indication  of 
the  times,  is  the  encyclical  of  his  holiness  the  present 
Pope  of  Rome.     He  urges  the  Roman  Priesthood  to 


122  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

resume  the  study  of  the  philosophy  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  and  assault  the  ranks  of  skepticism.  This, 
surely,  is  no  sign  of  weakening  on  the  part  of  that 
Church.  The  replies  to  skepticism  now  to  be  made 
by  both  Catholic  and  Protestant  will  display  a  theo- 
logic  thought  more  glorious  than  any  ever  before  it. 
The  Greek  Church  shows  no  signs  of  decay.  With 
an  awakened  interest  in  all  branches  of  the  Church, 
and  less  confident  positions  by  the  enemy;  with  a 
social  revolution  or  two  thrown  in  to  prove  the  state- 
ment that  righteousness  alone  exalteth  nations,  it  may 
be  confidently  claimed  that  religion  will  not  only  not 
die,  but  will  confirm  its  former  confident  command  of 
the  situation.  In  the  outcome  of  things,  change  must 
result  in  improvement;  but  under  all  circumstances, 
religion  is  indestructible.  The  Master  has  promised 
that  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  His 
Kingdom.  Those  who  tear  down  can  never  stand 
against  those  who  build  up.  Over  the  gate  of  despair 
there  will  ever  arise  the  bow  of  hope.  The  absence 
of  the  sun  is  not  its  extinction;  and  it  is  the  nearest 
in  the  winter,  when  its  beams  are  the  coldest.  Science, 
criticism,  and  political  unfriendliness  are  to  force 
religion  to  see  its  unanticipated  and  diviner  strength. 
Religion  has  more  to  fear  from,  ignorance  than  from 
enlightenment.  It  should  urge  the  world  to  study,  to 
take  scales,  retorts,  and  crucibles,  and  get  at  atoms, 
and  find  what  lies  below,  behind,  above  and  around 
them,  and  '  seek  after  God,  if  haply  they  may  find 
Him,  though  He  be  not  far  from  every  one  of  us,  for 
in  Him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being.' 

"  2.   Christianity  will  survive  by  the  laws  of  Evolution. 

"  In  the  struggle  for  existence  by  the  inherent  nature 
of  a  thing,  by  its  power  of  adaptation,  or  its  power  of 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  123 

resistance,  life  is  seen  in  a  struggle  with  environment 
from  without,  but  we  are  now  to  look  at  it  as  unroll- 
ing by  the  laws  of  its  life  within." 

Mr,  Herbert  Spencer  remarked,  "■  No  one  need  ex- 
pect that  the  religious  consciousness  will  die  away  or 
will  change  the  lines  of  its  evolution.  Its  specialities 
of  form,  once  strongly  marked  and  becoming  less  dis- 
tinct during  past  mental  progress,  will  continue  to 
fade;  but  the  substance  of  the  consciousness  will  per- 
sist. That  the  object-matter  can  be  replaced  by  an- 
other object-matter,  as  supposed  by  those  who  think 
the  '-  Religion  of  Humanity  '  will  be  the  religion  of 
the  future,  is  a  belief  countenanced  neither  by  induc- 
tion nor  by  deduction.  However  dominant  may  be- 
come the  moral  sentiment  enlisted  on  behalf  of 
Humanity,  it  can  never  exclude  the  sentiment,  alone 
properly  called  religion,  awakened  by  that  which  is 
behind  Humanity  and  behind  all  other  things.  The 
child  by  wrapping  its  head  in  the  bed-clothes,  may, 
for  a  moment,  suppress  the  consciousness  of  surround- 
ing darkness;  but  the  consciousness,  though  rendered 
less  visible,  survives,  and  the  imagination  persists  in 
occupying  itself  with  that  which  lies  beyond  percep- 
tion.* 

''  Nor  will  man  escape  this  religious  sentiment,  even 
if  he  open  his  eyes,  and  see  uniformities  where  the  un- 
enlightened intellect  saw  only  mystery,  and  the  awful- 
ness  of  mystery.  There  ever  arises  the  question,  How 
came  these  uniformities?  As  fast  as  science  transfers 
more  and  more  things  from  the  category  of  irregular- 
ities to  the  category  of  regularities,  the  mysteries  that 
once  attached  to  superstitious  explanations  of  them 
become  a  mystery  attaching  to  the  scientific  explana- 

*  H.  Spencer:  The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  311. 


124  IS  RELIGION  D  YING  ? 

tions  of  them  ;  there  is  a  merging  of  many  special 
mysteries  in  one  general  mystery.  The  astronomer 
having  shown  that  the  motions  of  the  solar  system 
imply  a  uniform  and  invariably  acting  force  he  calls 
gravitation,  finds  himself  utterly  incapable  of  conceiv- 
ing this  force.  Though  he  helps  himself  to  think  of 
the  sun's  action  on  the  earth  by  assuming  an  interven- 
ing medium,  and  finds  he  vmst  do  this  if  he  thinks 
about  it  at  all ;  yet  the  mystery  reappears  when  he 
asks  what  is  the  constitution  of  this  medium.  While 
compelled  to  use  units  of  ether  as  symxbols,  he  sees 
that  they  can  be  but  symbols.  Similarly  with  the 
physicist  and  the  chemist.  The  hypothesis  of  atoms 
and  the  molecules  enables  them  to  work  out  multi- 
tudinous interpretations  that  are  verified  by  experi- 
ment ;  but  the  ultimate  unit  of  matter  admits  of  no 
consistent  conception.  Instead  of  the  particular  mys- 
teries presented  by  those  actions  of  matter  they  have 
explained,  there  rises  into  prominence  the  mystery 
which  matter  universally  presents,  and  which  proves 
to  be  absolute.  So  that  beginning  with  the  germinal 
idea  of  mystery  which  the  savage  gets  from  a  display 
of  power  in  another  transcending  his  own,  and  the 
germinal  sentiment  of  awe  accompanying  it,  the  pro- 
gress is  toward  an  ultimate  recognition  of  a  mystery 
behind  every  act  and  appearance,  and  a  transfer  of 
the  awe  from  something  special  and  occasional  to 
something  universal  and  unceasing.* 

''  No  such  thing,  therefore,  as  a  '  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity '  can  ever  do  more  than  temporarily  shut  out 
the  thought  of  a  power  of  which  humanity  is  but  a 
small   and   fugitive   product — a  power  which  was  in 

*Ib. 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  135 

course  of  ever-changing  manifestations  when  human- 
ity has  ceased  to  be.* 

"  The  anti-theological  bias,  ignoring  the  truth  for 
which  religion  stands,  undervalues  religious  institu- 
tions in  the  past,  thinks  they  are  needless  in  the  pres- 
ent, and  expects  they  will  leave  no  representative  in 
the  future.  ...  It  generates  an  unwillingness  to 
see  that  a  religious  system  is  a  normal  and  essential 
factor  in  every  evolving  society  ;  that  the  specialties 
of  it  have  certain  fitness  to  the  social  conditions  ;  and 
that  while  its  form  is  temporary  its  substance  is  perma- 
nent. In  so  far  as  the  anti-theological  bias  causes  an 
ignoring  of  these  truths,  or  an  inadequate  appreciation 
of  them,  it  causes  misinterpretations.  To  maintain 
the  required  equilibrium  amid  the  conflicting  sym- 
pathies and  antipathies  which  contemplation  of  relig- 
ious beliefs  inevitably  generates,  is  difficult.  In  pres- 
ence of  the  theological  thaw  going  on  so  fast  on  all 
sides,  there  is  on  the  part  of  many  a  fear,  and  on  the 
part  of  some  a  hope,  that  nothing  will  remain.  But 
the  hopes  and  the  fears  are  alike  groundless ;  and 
must  be  dissipated  before  balanced  judgments  in  so- 
cial science  can  be  formed.  Like  the  transformations 
that  have  succeeded  one  another  hitherto,  the  trans- 
formation now  in  progress  is  but  an  advance  from  a 
lower  form,  no  longer  fit,  to  a  higher  and  fitter  form  ; 
and  neither  will  this  transformation,  nor  kindred 
transformations  to  come  hereafter,  destroy  that  which 
is  transformed,  any  more  than  past  transformations 
have  destroyed  it."f 

"  Then,"  said  the  host,  "  if  religion  could  die,  must 

*Ib. 

f  The  Study  of  Sociology,  ch.  xii,  p.  313. 


126  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

not  morality  die  with  it  ?  It  would  seem  that  it 
must." 

'''' Morality  without  Religion  is  unsupported^''*  said  Mr. 
Spencer. 

"Without  seeming  so,  the  development  of  religious 
sentiment  has  been  continuous  from  the  beginning ; 
and  its  nature  when  a  germ  was  the  same  as  its  nature 
when  fully  developed,  f 

"  Clearly,  a  visionary  hope  misleads  those  who 
think  that  in  an  imagined  age  of  reason  which  might 
forthwith  replace  an  age  of  beliefs  but  partly  rational, 
conduct  would  be  correctly  guided  by  a  code  directly 
based  on  considerations  of  utility.  A  utilitarian  sys- 
tem of  ethics  cannot  at  present  be  rightly  thought 
out  even  by  the  select  few,  and  is  quite  beyond  the 
mental  reach  of  the  many.  The  value  of  the  inher- 
ited and  theologically-enforced  code  is  that  it  formu- 
lates, with  some  approach  to  truth,  the  accumulated 
results  of  past  human  experience.  It  has  not  risen 
rationally  but  empirically.  During  past  times  man- 
kind have  eventually  gone  right  after  trying  all  pos- 
sible ways  of  going  wrong.  The  wrong-goings  have 
been  eventually  checked  by  disaster,  and  pain  and 
death  ;  and  the  right-goings  have  been  continued 
because  not  thus  checked.  There  has  been  a  growth 
of  beliefs  corresponding  to  those  good  and  evil  re- 
sults. Hence  the  code  of  conduct,  embodying  dis- 
coveries slowly  and  almost  unconsciously  made 
through  a  long  series  of  generations  has  transcendant 
authority  on  its  side. 

"  Nor  is  this  all.  Were  it  possible  forthwith  to  re- 
place   a   tradition-established    system    of   rules,  sup- 

*  lb.  359. 
f  lb.  310. 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  137 

posed  to  be  supernaturally  warranted,  by  a  system 
of  rules  rationally  elaborated,  no  such  rationally 
elaborated  system  of  rules  would  be  adequately  oper- 
ative. To  think  that  it  would  implies  the  thought 
that  men's  beliefs  and  actions  are  throughout  deter- 
mined by  intellect  ;  whereas  they  are,  in  much 
larger  degree,  determined  by  feeling. 

''There  is  a  wide  difference  between  the  formal 
assent  given  to  a  proposition  that  cannot  be  denied 
and  the  efficient  belief  which  produces  active  con- 
formity to  it.  Often  the  most  conclusive  argument 
fails  to  produce  a  conviction  capable  of  swaying  con- 
duct ;  and  often  mere  assertion,  with  great  emphasis 
and  signs  of  confidence  on  the  part  of  the  utterer,  will 
produce  a  fixed  conviction  where  there  is  no  evidence, 
and  even  in  spite  of  adverse  evidence.  Especially  is 
this  so  among  those  of  little  culture.  Not  only  may  we 
see  that  strength  of  affirmation  and  authoritative  man- 
ner create  faith  in  them  ;  but  we  may  see  that  their 
faith  sometimes  actually  decreases  if  explanation  is 
given.  The  natural  language  of  the  belief  displayed 
by  another  is  that  which  generates  their  belief — not 
the  logically-conclusive  evidence.  Nay,  it  is  even 
true  that  the  most  cultivated  intelligences,  capable  of 
criticizing  evidence  and  solving  arguments  to  a 
nicety,  are  not  thereby  made  rational  to  the  extent 
that  they  are  guided  by  intellect  apart  from  emotion. 
Continually  men  of  the  widest  knowledge  deliber- 
ately do  things  they  know  to  be  injurious  ;  suffer 
the  evils  that  transgression  brings  ;  are  deterred 
awhile  by  the  vivid  remembrance  of  them  ;  and  when 
the  remembrance  of  them  has  become  faint,  trans- 
gress again.  Often  the  emotional  consciousness  over- 
rides the  intellectual  consciousness  absolutely  as  hyo- 


128  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

chondriacal  patients  show  us.  All  which,  and  many- 
kindred  facts,  make  it  certain  that  the  operativeness 
of  a  moral  code  depends  much  more  on  the  emo- 
tions called  forth  by  its  injunctions,  than  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  utility  of  obeying  such  injunctions. 
The  feelings  drawn  out  during  early  life  toward 
moral  principles,  by  witnessing  the  social  sanction 
they  possess,  influence  conduct  far  more  than  the  per- 
ception that  the  conformity  lo  such  principles  con- 
duces to  welfare.  And  in  the  absence  of  the  feelings 
which  manifestation  of  these  sanctions  arouse  the 
utilitarian  belief  is  commonly  inadequate  to  produce 
conformity. 

''It  is  true  that  the  sentiments  in  the  higher 
races  are  now  in  considerable  degrees  adjusted  to 
these  principles  ;  the  sympathies  that  have  become 
organic  in  the  most  developed  men,  produce  spontan- 
eous conformity  to  altruistic  precepts.  Even  for  such, 
however,  the  social  sanction,  which  is  in  part  derived 
from  the  religious  sanction,  is  important  as  strength- 
ening the  influence  of  these  precepts.  And  for  per- 
sons endowed  with  less  of  moral  sentiment  the  social 
and  religious  sanctions  are  still  more  important  aids 
to  guidance. 

"  Thus  the  anti-theological  bias  leads  to  serious 
errors  both  when  it  ignores  the  essential  share 
hitherto  taken  by  religious  systems  in  giving  force 
to  certain  principles  of  action,  in  part  abolutely 
good  and  in  part  good  relatively  to  the  needs  of  the 
time,  and  again,  when  it  prompts  the  notion  that  these 
principles  might  now  be  so  established  on  rational 
bases  as  to  rule  men  effectually  through  their  enlight- 
ened intellects."  * 

*H.  Spencer:    The  Study  of  Sociology,   pp.  307-S-9. 


THE   DEAN.  129 

Some  moments  of  silence  followed  these  remarks, 
each  one  pondering  them  from  the  standpoint  of  his 
own  philosophy. 

''Still,"  said  some  one,  "  that  the  intellectual  world 
of  to-day  is  drifting  away  from  the  religious  in  be- 
lief and  dogmatic  theology  of  the  past,  is  a  fact  which 
is  more  evident  to  the  student,  the  wider  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  current  of  contemporary  thought  in 
Christendom."  * 

"  Most  depends,"  replied  the  Dean,  "upon  your 
view  as  to  what  religion  is." 

"The  class  to  which  a  man  shall  belong,"  remarked 
some  one,  "is  not  determined  so  much  by  his  moral 
purity  or  the  elevation  of  his  motives  as  by  his  belief 
in  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  and  the  miracu- 
lous birth  and  resurrection  of  Christ  and  his  perform- 
ance of  certain  mental  acts  of  acceptance  toward  his 
Saviour.  If  he  complies  with  these  conditions  his 
moral  constitution  may  be  such  that  he  has  daily  to 
repent  of  a  propensity  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  sin, 
lets  his  notes  go  to  protest,  and  finds  it  very  hard  to 
recall  his  cattle  when  he  sees  them  grazing  on  his 
neighbors'  fields  ;  yet,  if  he  fights  manfully  against 
his  wicked  propensities  and  repents  of  each  bad 
deed,  he  may  remain  among  the  elect.  But  if  one 
finds  himself  an  atheist,  or  even  a  disbeliever  in  the 
divine  mission  of  Christ,  his  righteousness  and  moral 
elevation  are  but  as  filthy  rags.  He  may  labor  for 
humanity  with  the  most  disinterested  devotion,  be 
animated  throughout  his  life  by  the  highest  and  pur- 
est of  motives,  without  doing  anything  to  remove 
from  him  the  curse  of  Adam."  f 

*  North  American  Review,  December,  1879. 
f  North  American  Review,  December,  1879. 


130  IS  RELIGION  DYING? 

"  You  assume,"  rejoined  the  Dean,  "  two  things:  First, 
that  the  Christian  will  be  the  weaker  member  of  society, 
with  his  Christianity,  believing,  sinning  and  repent- 
ing all  his  life  ;  and,  second,  that  the  infidel  will  be 
the  stronger  one  without  it,  being  righteous  and  mor- 
ally elevated,  and  a  man  laboring  for  humanity  and 
of  disinterested  devotion,  without  sins  and  equally 
without  faith.  This,  you  assume,  whereas  the  truth 
is,  that  the  Christian  will  be  morally  stronger  with  his 
religion  than  he  would  be  without  it,  and  the  infidel 
will  be  morally  weaker  without  any  religion  than  he 
would  be  with  it.  You  compare  a  Christian  of  a  weak 
character  with  an  infidel  of  strong  character,  but  re- 
verse it  and  compare  a  morally  weak  infidel  with  a 
morally  strong  Christian  and  note  the  result.  In  the 
outcome  of  things  religion  will  be  placed  according  to 
its  value.  It  has  been  oftentimes  before,  is  now,  and 
ever  will  be,  challenged  to  show  that  it  is  necessary  for 
the  control  of  human  conduct.  Men  are  not  governed 
by  their  intellects,  as  Mr.  Spencer  shows,  but  either  by 
persuasion  of  feeling,  or  by  force,  or  by  both.  In 
this  alternative  religion  is  sure  of  its  supremacy. 

"  There  is  but  one  simple  religion — the  natural  and 
the  universal — whose  manifestions  are  modified  ac- 
cording to  outward  circumstances,  but  whose  essence 
is  always  the  same.* 

"  Dependence,"  continued  the  Dean,  "  is  the  one  fact 
of  the  universe,  and  man  in  his  weakness  below  ever 
reaches  up  to  super-human  power  above.  Man  turns 
to  the  Infinite,  and  this  is  religion." 

"The  religious  feeling,"  said  Mr.  Tyndall,  '' is  as 
much  a  verity  as  any  other  part  of  human  conscious- 
ness, and  the  immoval  basis  of  the  religious  sentiment 
is   in   the  emotional    nature  of  man.     There  are  such 

*  Dr.  Pressence  :   Religions  before  Christ. 


DR.  MARTINEAU.  131 

things  woven  into  the  texture  of  man  as  the  feelings 
of  awe,  reverence  and  wonder."  * 

"  If  religion  could  die,"  continued  the  Dean, 
"  all  faith  in  the  unseen  Father,  all  hope  of  an  here- 
after, all  anticipated  reunions,  all  worship,  all  sacred- 
ness,  all  things  that  lift  man  above  the  brute — if  all 
that  cheers  life  and  glorifies  the  openings  of  destiny 
were  to  expire,  would  life  be  worth  living  ? 

"  Man  without  a  future  is  an  animal  in  the  present. 
We  keep  our  bodies  under  now  for  joys  above  the 
body  hereafter  ;  but  if  there  be  no  hereafter  the  pres- 
ent appetite  is  man's  strongest  power.  Human  nature 
is  too  weak  for  present  sacrifices  without  the  hope  of 
future  compensations.  Religion  is  a  life  of  motives 
Self-preservation  is  the  first  law  of  nature.  The  sacri- 
fice of  one's  self  for  another  is  only  possible  under 
hopes  of  a  future  reward  or  intense  passions  that 
obliterate  the  future.  The  grandest  heroism  is  in  acts 
which,  for  others,  sacrifice  the  present  for  a  future." 

Dr.  Martineau  said  that  ''  ReJigion  is  reproached 
with  not  \>€\x\^ pf'ogressive ;  it  makes  amends  by  being 
imperishable.  The  enduring  element  in  our  humanity 
is  not  in  the  doctrines  which  we  consciously  elaborate, 
but  in  the  faiths,  which  unconsciously  dispose  of  us, 
and  never  slumber  but  to  wake  again.  What  treatise 
on  sin,  what  philosophy  of  retribution  is  as  fresh  as 
the  fifty-first  Psalm  ?  What  scientific  theory  has 
lasted  like  the  Lord's  Prayer  ?  It  is  an  evidence  of 
movement  that  in  a  library  no  books  become  sooner 
obsolete  than  books  of  science.  It  is  no  less  a  mark 
of  stability  that  poetry  and  religious  literature  survive, 
and  even  ultimate  philosophies  seldom  die  but  to  rise 
again.  These,  and  with  them  the  kindred  services  of 
devotion,  are  the  expression  of  aspirations  and  faiths 
*  Belfast  Address. 


132  IS  RELIGION  D  YING? 

which  forever  cry  out  for  interpreters  and  guides. 
And  in  proportion  as  you  carry  your  appeal  to  those 
deepest  seats  of  our  nature  you  not  only  reach  the 
firmest  ground,  but  touch  accordant  notes  in  every 
heart,  so  that  the  response  turns  out  a  harmony." 

Dr.  Frothingham  remarked  :  "  As  to  the  fact  that 
revealed  religion,  as  we  call  it,  is  stronger  to-day  than 
it  was  twenty  years  ago,  I  have  no  doubt.  It  is 
stronger  here  and  in  Europe,  notwithstanding  the 
much  talked-of  German  materialism,  and  the  religion 
of  to-day  is  all  the  stronger  than  that  of  twenty 
years  ago,  in  that  it  is  throwing  off  the  secretions 
of  ignorance  and  presents  fewer  features  incompat- 
ible with  good  sense  and  charity.  I  am  no  more  a 
believer  in  revealed  religion  to-day  than  I  was  a 
year  ago,  but,  as  I  said  before,  I  have  doubts  which  I 
had  not  then.  The  creeds  of  to-day  do  not  seem  in 
my  eyes  to  be  so  wholly  groundless  as  they  were 
then,  and  while  I  believe  the  next  hundred  years  will 
see  great  changes  in  them,  I  do  not  think  they  are 
destined  to  disappear.  To  sum  up  the  whole  matter, 
the  work  which  I  have  been  doing  appears  to  lead 
to  nothing,  and  may  have  been  grounded  upon  mis- 
taken premises.  Therefore  it  is  better  to  stop  ;  but 
I  do  not  want  to  give  the  impresssion  that  I  recant 
anything  ;  I  simply  stop  denying  and  wait  for  more 
light." 


" ^nd  Jesus  came  and  spake  unto  them,  saying:  All  power  is 
given  Unto  me  in  heaven  and  in  earth.  Go  ye,  therefore,  and 
teach  all  nations,  baptising  them  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  and 
of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  teaching  them  to  observe  all 
things  whatsoever  I  have  commanded  you ;  and,  lo,  I  am  with  you 
always,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world.     Amen." 


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